


we were made to never fall away

by colfield



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to guns, Threats of Violence, Violence, anything else that falls under a zombie fic, mentions of past character death, references to blood and gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2015-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 00:22:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3708393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colfield/pseuds/colfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In 2009, Niall Horan died. In 2014, he woke up.</p><p> </p><p>  <em>The thing about coming back to life is that you have to figure out how to live again. </em></p><p> </p><p>Or, an In The Flesh au</p>
            </blockquote>





	we were made to never fall away

**Author's Note:**

> So after months and months of working on this, it's finally done. I want to first-and-foremost thank Sharon and Kiwi, without them this would literally not exist. Thanks for the constant hand-holding and butt-kicking to get working on it. You guys are the best. Next I would like to thank Wade for the gorgeous art. I am so lucky to have gotten you for my artist, thank you for creating the perfect art to match my fic. Finally, I have to thank Hozier for the hours of inspiration his music has provided. This idea was inspired after hearing Work Song.
> 
> Before reading, I would urge everyone to read the warnings. The only Major Character Death is Niall's, and he comes back to life, but it is referenced multiple times throughout this fic. I hope that I have explained this universe with enough detail that there is no need to watch In The Flesh to understand what is happening, but I encourage you to watch the show anyway. This is a zombie love story, so anyway who is squicked by zombie-related content should take that into account before continuing.
> 
> I do not own the premise of this fic, nor do I own the people I've written about. Other than that, I hope you enjoy.
> 
> Song title taken from Letters to the Sky by Civil Twilight

The thing about dying is that you know it’s going to happen. The last thought that goes through your head is I am about to die, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The pretty lies the living tell about death – peace, acceptance, letting go – there’s none of that. In those last moments there’s only fear and then – nothing.

The thing about coming back to life is that you have no idea it’s going to happen. In the grave there’s no life or death, only desperate, clinging terror. The only instinct is survival, to start digging, clawing at the inside of the coffin, then through layers of earth, with no knowledge that there is anything but this dark, lonely fear.

“You should be asleep.”

Niall jumps at the nurse’s voice. He’s been staring at the same spot on the wall for so long his vision blurs when he looks away. The nurse is carrying a fresh set of linens in her arms. The bed next to his has been empty since he arrived. “Big day tomorrow,” She grins, dropping the sheets as she starts to prepare the bed.

Niall shrugs. “Don’t like to sleep.” The nurse’s name is Jade. She’s been kind to him since the beginning, even when he was spitting blood and trying to rip her apart. Niall shivers, hugging his knees to his chest. “Don’t like the dreams.”

Jade clicks her tongue sympathetically. She fluffs the pillow, shoving it into the starchy pillowcase with a bit of difficulty. A bit of hair falls out of her bun into her face. It’s blue today, the ends darker than the roots.

“Do you need help with that?” He unfolds his position to stand before he’s finished asking. 

Jade blows the hair from her face, smiles gratefully at him when takes a corner of the sheet. “Thanks, love.”

He works quietly, tucking the corners in neatly like his mum taught him. Jade doesn’t say anything as she works. “Am I getting a roommate?” He asks once the bed is finished. He takes a step back.

She shakes her head, smoothing the creases in the middle of the bed. “Sorry, love, no idea.” His mum used to call him that, stroking his hair away from his forehead. He’d always hated it when he was a kid.

Jade’s hands come up to rest on her hips, disturbing the black stun gun attached to her hip. “You’ll be out of here before they arrive if there is one, though.”

Niall tries to smile back, but can’t get his mouth to work right. He moves back to his bed, ducking his head to avoid his reflection in the mirror on the far side of the room. Jade leaves and he goes back to staring at the spot on the wall.

The thing about coming back to life is that you have to figure out how to live again.

-

“I’m a Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer, and what I did in my untreated state was not my fault.”

As part of his treatment, Niall is required to attend therapy sessions. He doesn’t usually talk during the meetings – he hasn’t got much to say – but today Dr. Gill turns his attention Niall almost immediately.

“Niall is leaving us soon,” He announces, gesturing to Niall as he takes his seat. Dr. Gill’s glasses slip down his face when he twitches his nose. The group claps exactly the way you would expect a group of undead to clap. Niall wraps his ankle around the leg of his chair.

“PDS survivors sometimes have trouble adjusting back to their old lives. Is there anything you’re worried about with your transition?” Dr. Gill speaks in a slow, careful way. He’s a short man, no later than his mid-thirties, but he has the eyes of someone much older. Niall wonders what he did during the Rising. If he’s still alive, it must have been something horrible.

“Not really,” He says. Dr. Gill deflates into his chair, shoulders slumping inward. Everything is grey here – the uniforms, the bed sheets, the color of his skin.

Niall searches for something to offer to the group.

“Dad is coming to pick me up,” He flexes his fingers against his thigh, focuses on the way his tendons move and the weight of his palm on his leg. “It’ll be nice to see him.”

Dr. Gill nods at him encouragingly, expectantly. Niall clears his throat, squirms in his seat. “I guess . . . I’m still getting a lot of nightmares?” Dr. Gill visibly brightens at that.

“Nightmares are an important part of the healing process. It means you’re remembering – it keeps your humanity in tact . . . ” Niall tunes Dr. Gill out. He’s heard this all before.

-

Trevor finds Niall in his room a few hours before he’s scheduled to be released. The few things Niall has managed to collect during his stay are spread out on the bed, waiting to be packed.

He’s at the mirror, one eye on the instructions label on the back of the tub of mousse. It’s the final step to completing the transition. Dr. Gill calls it “blending in”.

The shade of mousse they’ve given him is darker than his natural complexion – what his natural complexion used to be. The blue contacts make his eyes look bigger. He used to have freckles. It’s a checklist of all the things that aren’t quite right, like looking at a slightly different version of himself.

His mouth pulls into a frown, and in the mirror his reflection copies the movement.

This is who he is now.

Trevor doesn’t say anything when he stumbles into the room, but he frowns heavily at Niall when he sees him.

He was already in the T.C when Niall arrived weeks ago. He’s adjusting to the treatment much slower than the average patient. He still walks in that not-quite-alive way, for one, and he speaks in mostly grunts rather than a normal speech pattern. The nurses are reluctant to be near him alone.

He’s not so bad though.

“Hey, Trevor,” Niall turns his back to the table, grateful to have something else to focus on.

He collapses on the empty bed, ruffling the sheets. Niall will have to sort them out once he leaves.

“They’ve already got someone to replace me,” He tries to joke, gesturing to the bed Trevor is on. Trevor grunts.

“Suppose it won’t be so bad, being back in the world again. Get to see my family. Wear my own clothes, and sleep in my bed again.” Niall picks at a loose thread on his pants. He wraps the thread around his middle finger. Before, his finger would turn white under the lack of circulation. Now, he can barely feel the tight pain. He rips at the thread until it snaps.

“You looking forward to getting out?” Trevor lifts his head. His eyes are milky white, lifeless. Trevor is still ages away from getting contact lenses. 

“I won’t.” Trevor says. His voice is a low grumble.

Niall blinks. It’s more of a muscle memory, instinct, rather than a necessity. “Won’t what?”

“Be getting out.”

“Course you will. Just cause it’s taking you longer to get accustomed – ”

“No.” Trevor cuts him off, voice sharp. Niall flinches. “They don’t want someone like me out there. They want you.” Trevor waves a hand at Niall. It’s a stiff, unnatural movement. Niall recoils a little, resists the urge to hide. “A good zombie.”

“I’m not a zombie.” Niall protests weakly. Dr. Gill always tells the group that zombies are myths, a folklore used to scare children. That if he doesn’t value his life as something important, than no one else will. That Partially Deceased Syndrome is a disease, curable. That it should not define them.

Trevor doesn’t move. He sits perfectly still, dead eyes staring at Niall. He looks like something out of a horror film.

“People are scared of us, Niall. They want us to hide what we are.”

Niall frowns at his white trainers. The T.C. has given him clothes to wear during his stay. The powder blue joggers and white shirt look like scrubs from a hospital, too stiff to move around comfortably. He tugs at his shirt, avoids looking up to meet Trevor’s gaze.

“How do you know all this?” Trevor is still looking at him with that dead expression. “It’s not like you’ve been out there recently.” Niall kicks the sole of his heel against the floor. He used to do that a lot as a kid in school, scuffing his shoes against the tiled floor of his classroom, leaving black marks behind. He wishes he could leave a mark here, something permanent as a proof of his existence. I am real and I was here.

“You hear things.”

Niall scoffs. “What things. I haven’t heard any ‘things’.”

“Be careful,” Trevor says after a full minute of silence has passed. “About who you trust.”

-

The hallway is empty. There’s a distant squeak of shoes on the linoleum floor the echoes through the vacant halls.

Niall fists his hands in the material of his gray trousers. They’re dark, a bit too baggy for him. His mum must’ve picked them out – he never would’ve wanted to be buried in a suit. It’s clean, at least, not caked in dirt and blood like it was when they brought him in here.

The door in front of him opens. He jumps, knocking the bag off his lap. Inside are a change of clothes the T.C has donated, a pamphlet titled Living With Partial Deceased Syndrome and a set of instructions for his medication. The bag tumbles to the floor, but Niall doesn’t have to time to react before he’s wrapped in a tight hug.

His dad smells like the aftershave he’s used since Niall was a child and the pine scented car freshener that hangs above his dashboard. His shoulders are shaking, and he’s hugging Niall so hard that if Niall still had to worry about breathing, he wouldn’t be able to. As it is, he returns the hug as tightly as he can manage.

His dad is sniffling into his shoulder, no doubt getting the collar of his shirt wet. Niall squeezes his eyes shut. If he pretends, he can almost feel the dampness seeping through the material.

They stay hugging until the doctor coughs awkwardly next to them. “Right, let me get a good look at you,” His dad pulls back, keeping Niall in place with hands on his shoulder. Niall hands hang by his sides, fingers twitching for something to do. He stands there and lets his dad look.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that Niall last saw his dad, but for his father it’s been nearly five years. The aging on his father’s face is clear – the deeper wrinkles along his mouth and eyes, his hair grayer than Niall’s memories. His eyes are red and swollen from crying. He looks good. He looks like home.

His cheeks are wet, and he keeps taking deep gulps of air like he can’t get enough of it into his lungs. “Oh, Niall.” He takes Niall’s face into his hands, stroking his cheeks with his thumbs. His hands dart from his face to his shoulders, chest, arms, back up to his face to brush his hair away from his forehead, proving that Niall is real, solid, alive.

He yanks Niall into another hug. “I’ve missed you, son.”

Niall sinks into it, tucking into the safety of his father’s embrace. “Missed you, too, dad.”

-

The drive home is long. Niall’s leg keeps bouncing. His dad’s voice is a comfort over the steady hum of the tape deck playing an old Eagles track. Niall hums the chorus under his breath, only half listening as he watches the endless, grey washed fields pass by.

His dad talks about what his neighbors having been doing, where the kids he grew up with are now. It’s an unsettling thought – that his childhood friends, his best friends, are now five years older, that they have entirely new lives that he’s not a part of.

“Dad,” he cuts him off in the middle of a story about his elderly neighbor Mrs. Benson and her cat. “Where’s Mum? Why – why didn’t she come?”

Bobby’s mouth twitches. He switches lanes to pass a blue BMW. Three letters are painted on the side in green – HVF. The Eagles fade out into silence and the tape clicks as it starts automatically rewinding.

“It’s been so long since the Rising first started,” He starts tentatively. Niall frowns, tucks his hands underneath his legs. “Nearly a year and half, actually,” He glances at Niall with a watery smile. “We weren’t sure if you’d actually Risen, you know. There was so much confusion, and the government wasn’t helping anyone and –” He cuts himself off to maneuver around a lorry. Niall’s hands tighten into fists. “And for a while things were so, so terrible.” His voice breaks at the end. Not for the first time, Niall imagines what his dad had to do to survive. “Then we heard about the cure. Things started getting better, people could go back to their lives. Your mother, she, she just needs some time. To get things sorted.”

“Right.” He doesn’t need that spelled out for him.

“It’s hard for her, Niall. Doesn’t mean she don’t love you.” He reaches to comfort Niall, his hand hovering awkwardly for a moment. He pats him twice on the leg before returning to the steering wheel.

Niall turns back to the window. The country has disappeared behind stark concrete buildings and crumbling brick walls. There’s a sign on the side of the motorway. A friendly looking woman smiles placidly on the advert. Remember to take your medicine it reads do it for the safety of your community. A crude message in dripping red letters covers her face – FUCK ROTTERS.

Niall may be temporarily cured, but he should never forget that at the end of the day, he’s dangerous; a monster. No amount of make up or contact lenses will change that. Five years ago his heart stopped beating, and it hasn’t miraculously started again just because he can walk and talk.

“I’m real glad you’re okay.” Bobby says. Niall offers him the half smile he’s perfected over the last few weeks.

He doesn’t say anything else the rest of the drive, letting his dad ramble on about the people he used to know.

-

Being back in his childhood room isn’t a shock the way the people at the Treatment Center made it seem. When he died, this was the room he still lived in. Mostly, it feels like coming home after a very long and very strange journey.

The bed creaks when he sits on it. The room has been left the same, down to the pile of shoes thrown absently in the corner. His Derby County poster is still up on the wall, one corner peeling down where the tape is weak. The pictures he haphazardly thumbtacked to the wall when he was 14 are still there, crooked and overlapping in a way he thought was so cool ten years ago.

He can hear Bobby downstairs, fiddling with the television, and the roar of a crowd when he finds a football game on.

This house was always too small. There’s no space to breathe.

He images how different it must be for his father, who loved this house, even with its too thin walls, the endless list of Things That Needed Fixing, and the heating that only worked half the time. He loved this house enough to keep living in it after his son died. To keep this room exactly the way it was when he was alive. Trying to find ways to fill the silence of his absence sons. This house must have felt too big in those moments.

Niall hugs a pillow to his chest, seeking comfort in the soft give of the material.

He must fall asleep like that, because the next time he opens his eyes, everything is dark and he’s tucked under his covers. He has a brief moment of disorienting panic, the blankets too tight, the room too dark. He reaches out blindly for something to ground him and knocks over a glass of water.

“Shit,” He curses, sitting up. He fumbles for the light switch, flooding the room in a soft yellow glow. The glass is tipped over on his rug, a puddle of dark liquid spreading outwards. The sheets are a rumbled, twisted mess. He kicks them off the bed.

Niall takes a deep, shuddering breath. Panic no longer settles in his body the way it use to. No more sweating palms or thudding heartbeat. Instead, there’s this empty, suffocating feeling low in his stomach. It’s worse, in a way he can’t put words to.

He watches the water seep into the rug. If he closes his eyes, flashes of his nightmare play like a horror film: a man’s horrorstricken face, the sound his body made when it hit the ground, the dark pool of blood, black against pale flesh.

“Fuck.” He wraps his duvet around his shoulders like a cape, and shuffles out his room, leaving the glass on the floor without bothering to clean the mess. 

The couch isn’t any more comfortable than he remembers, but he’s able to build a little nest of blankets and pillows. There’s a marathon of South Park on the telly. He turns the volume down low. At least there’s one thing that hasn’t changed.

Niall doesn’t get back to sleep that night.

-

The next week passes slowly.

Bobby takes a few days off of work to help the “transition back into normal life, I was reading those pamphlets the Treatment Center sent over and they say it’s important to take things slow”.   
They don’t leave the house. They fill their time with movie marathons, Bobby catching Niall up on the must see films in the last ten years. Niall likes the James Bond movies best, and he hates The King’s Speech.

Bobby teaches him to play the newer versions of the same video games he used to play with his friends. They hardly leave the couch that first week, and it’s good, comfortable.

But Niall can’t shake the feeling that there’s something off with him, that he doesn’t quite fit into this life anymore. There are gaps that he can’t manage to fill no matter how hard he tries, parts of his family and friends’ lives that he should’ve been there for. He spends hours on his facebook one day, clicking through links trying to piece together what he’s missed.

His brother is married. He has a kid now. He’s missed birthdays and graduations and job promotions. He doesn’t even recognize half the faces in the pictures he sees.

It’s like having the world’s worst case of amnesia, and no matter how badly you try to catch up, there’s too much missing. It’s confusing and frustrating at all once, and Niall is on the verge of yelling or crying at any given moment.

The second day home, a nurse from the Treatment Center stops by to teach Bobby the proper dosage for his medication.

It’s raining when she arrives, holding a little red umbrella and a bag with the Treatment Center’s emblem on it.

She introduces herself as Rosie.

“Shall I get you some tea?” Bobby offers. He’s dressed up today, a nice button down over a pair of slacks, a change from their customary joggers and tees outfit of late. He keeps fiddling with things on the table while Rosie sets up.

She smiles warmly at him. “That’d be great, thank you.” 

She lays everything out on the table in neat little rows, the needles still packaged in clear plastic bags. The small vial of cloudy liquid injection sits nearest him. It’s barely thicker than his pinky. He taps the end with his nail. Rosie notices him, picks up the vial to show him.

“The boys over at the Center have been busy trying to get the new Neurotriptyline out. It’s meant to be longer-lasting. Less injections.” She winks at him. Niall looks away.

He knows how this goes, the injections, lets Rosie’s explanations to Bobby wash over him. Outside, there’s a small grey cat sitting in the middle of the road, cleaning itself. Part of its left ear is missing.

“Niall, dear,” Rosie puts her hand on his shoulder. Niall jumps, curling away from the touch. Rosie quickly retracts her hand. “Mind bending over the table?” She waves the needle a little.

Niall closes his eyes, gripping to the edge of the table as Rosie uncovers the hole sat at the base of his neck.

“Now, this part fits right into here,” Rosie is speaking in soft, instructing manner. Bobby steps up behind Niall’s chair. He pats Niall on the shoulder, leaving his hand there as he prepares the injection. “Squeeze the trigger gently – ”

No matter how many times Niall has received the injection, he’s never prepared for the jolt. He images it’s like how getting shot must feel. His vision blacks, the feeble grip he has on the table the only thing grounding him.

It takes a few second for the fog to clear. He rolls his shoulders, shaking out the sensation. Bobby is pale faced, staring wide-eyed at the boxes of medication Rosie is unloading on the table.

“I have to give this to him every day?” Bobby’s voice shakes.

“Unless you want him to go rabid.” Rosie smiles at them both. “You’re all set up now. Any questions, don’t hesitate to call.” She taps two fingers on a small business card she’s left on top the stack of boxed Neurotriptyline.

Niall gets up to walk to her to the door, leaving Bobby to deal with the mess.

“Can I ask you a favor?” He asks as she putting her coat on, keeping his voice low, back facing the kitchen. Rosie raises a brow in question. “I have a friend – at the Treatment Center – his name is Trevor. Could you check up on him?”

Rosie pats his check. “’Course dear.”

Then she disappears into the rain, her red umbrella the only spot of color in the dull grey morning. Niall watches her go until the spot of color disappears around the corner.

The cat is gone.

Things continue on in the Horan home the same as those first few days. No one comes to visit. Bobby only leaves the house once to fetch milk on the fourth day. He’s gone less than twenty minutes.

“Dad, I was literally dead for four years.” Niall says on the fifth consecutive night stuck inside. He pauses for effect. Bobby hums while he stirs something at the stove – only enough for one. “I’m more bored now then I was in the grave.” Bobby doesn’t say anything, but Niall catches him rolling his eyes.

They struggle to fall back into a familiar rhythm. Niall no longer measures his days by meals, but by his injections. The itching under the skin caused by stir-craze has started to set in. Bobby can hardly sit in the same room for more than forty minutes before something draws his attention in another room. He refuses to let Niall outside, always an excuse ready whenever Niall mentions going out for an afternoon, some reason why one or both of them can’t possibly leave.

Objectively, Niall realizes that Bobby is scared. He’s just got his son back. Recognizing that fact doesn’t make the situation any less frustrating.

They’re putting together a puzzle on the coffee table, The Goonies playing on the telly, when Bobby clears his throat pointedly about a week after Niall’s return.

“Back to work tomorrow.” He says. Niall’s nearly completed the small brown dog. He’s missing two pieces to for the tail.

“How do ya feel about that?” Bobby’s staring at him. Niall shrugs. He turns the puzzle piece to make it fit. “I could always ask for more time off, if you need me to –” 

“No.” If he uses enough force, he can just get the pieces fit together. He presses down with his weight until it does.

Bobby sighs heavily. “You know it’s okay if it takes a bit longer to adjust. It’s only been a week, and I really don’t mind.”

Niall tightens his mouth. “I’ll be fine.” He tries to think of a nicer way to say I don’t want you to.

“You’ll be lonely here.”

Niall drags his eyes away from his puzzle search. “I’ll manage.” He half-smiles. Bobby’s eyebrows are drawn together, forehead wrinkled.

When he looks back down at his section of the puzzle, he realizes the piece doesn’t fit at all.

-

His dad has already left for work when he wakes up the next morning. There’s a note taped the inside of his door. 

be back later don’t leave house love dad x

Niall rolls his eyes. It’s such a dad thing to do.

He’s dressed and out the door in less than fifteen minutes.

He wanders the familiar streets, noting the subtle changes in the neighborhoods. His hands are shoved deep in his pockets as he walks. There aren’t many people out, either at school or work, doing whatever it is people do to keep busy. It seems that life continues on after death.

He’s got a snapback on, an old ratty thing that he wore for the better part of the last year of his life. It’s obnoxiously red, even as worn as it is, some American sports team logo on the front. It offers a little comfort, pulled low enough he can hide his face if necessary.

His memories have spoiled this place. There’s the playground where he broke his arm when he was five, the tree where his best friend dared him to climb all the way to top, the brick wall of the school that faces the woods where he had his first kiss. There’s the trashcan he puked in the first time he stumbled home drunk from a party, the mailbox he crashed into learning how to drive, the street his brother taught him how to ride a bike, the church he was baptized in.

That was the spot he died, his bloodied, broken body laid out on the pavement.

There’s the house where he ripped a man apart.

He ducks into an unfamiliar grocery store when it begins to storm. The rain is light, but the dark sky warns for what’s to come. He drifts up and down the isles aimlessly, trying to acquaint himself to this new place.

There are two attendants at the front, a young girl, no older than sixteen, with dark hair tied into two loose braids, and a bald man with a thick mustache wearing a blue managers vest. The two shoot him worried glances as he walks by. Normally, he would smile at them, wave, maybe even walk over to have a chat. Now though, he deserves those apprehensive stares.

He huddles deeper into his jumper and makes his way to the back of the store.

Niall freezes in the middle of the isle.

There’s a boy standing in the boxed meals isle, glaring at a box of instant rice on the top self. He’s got a maroon beanie pulled low over his head, bundled up in a thick hoodie. He can’t see much of his face, but what Niall can see is pinched up in a scowl.

He’s far enough down that he’s shielded from view from the store attendants, but within clear view of this stranger if he were to turn his head slightly to the left. There is nowhere for him to go. 

He moves backwards, slowly, like an animal forced into a corner. He doesn’t see the Kraft Macaroni Cheese display until something sharp hits his back and he’s on the floor, twenty boxes of macaroni scattering across the floor.

“Shit, dude, are you okay?” The guy rushes over to him, kneeling down next to him. Niall slumps down, tucking his chin into his chest, willing his body to sink into the floor.

The guy chuckles, hand gentle as he takes Niall’s upper arm to help him up. “What happened there?”

“I tripped.” Niall says. He keeps his eyes down, brim of his hat blocking the view of his face.

“Well, no damage done.” Niall does look up at that, to glance pointedly at the boxes of macaroni on the floor. The side of the guy’s mouth quirks up. “Well, not much.”

He’s cute, is the thing. A nice face, if a tad scruffy, but he has a smile like he’s got a secret. The kind of guy Niall wouldn’t have thought twice about hitting on. Before.

The click of the gun locking into place is louder than a gunshot in the nearly vacant isle. The girl from the front of the store stands five meters away, shotgun aimed for Niall’s head.

“Whoa, whoa,” The guy shouts, holding up his hands. Niall shrinks back, taking a step away from him.

“Get out.” She hisses. The guy steps into the line of the barrel, nudging Niall behind him with one steady arm. He’s got both his hands held up in surrender but Niall has learnt to look for the bulge of a gun tucked into the back of jeans.

“It was a mistake. We’ll clean it up. No need for dramatics.” He’s talking in hushed tones, head tilted to the side.

“We don’t welcome Rotters here.” She spits out the word like it’s poison. The hold on the shotgun doesn’t loosen at all with Niall out of the direct shot. Niall curls his fingers around the guy’s arm, tries to pull him back, but he shakes him off easily.

“You,” She says, shaking the gun a bit. The guy tenses, but he doesn’t move. “I know you. You’re Bobby Horan’s kid. I ‘member when you died.” Niall flinches. “I won’t say it again. Get. Out.”

The guy makes a noise like he’s about to argue. This time he’s not able to shake out of Niall’s hold on his arm.

“Alright. I’m going.” Niall says, speaking to the stranger. He looks stricken, half angry and half distressed. Niall squeezes his arm lightly, hoping the gesture conveys his gratitude.

The aim of the gun zeroes in on him again as he slips by the worker. She spits at him as he passes her, her mouth drawn up in snarl. For a moment, she is so reminiscent of what she hates. He can see it – the gray skin, the white eyes, the bloodlust as she lunges to sink her teeth into flesh. He blinks, and the image is gone.

Niall quickens his pace.

The rain is heavy when he steps outside, so thick he can barely see ten meters ahead. He’s soaked through immediately.

He’s trying to orient himself when he hears a voice over the roar of water.

The guy from the store is waving at him. Niall can’t hear what he’s saying, too far away to catch the words before they’re swallowed up by the wind. The guy is jogging towards him. Niall watches him, his body half turned away.

“What?” Niall shouts when the guy is close enough. The guy’s hair is sticking to his forehead. He wipes it out of his eyes, panting, smirking. He’s holding something to his chest with his other hand. Niall can’t make out what it is. He takes a cautious step back.

The guy frowns, shaking his head as he presents what he was hiding: two blue boxes of macaroni in the space between them.

“I took them when she was too busy kicking you out. Didn’t even notice. Not very good at her job, is she?” He’s still holding out the boxes, like he’s not sure where to go from here.

“Oh.” Niall says. He takes one of the boxes. The wind is picking up, slanting the rain so it falls sideways against them. The corner of the box is wet. “I can’t eat this.” Niall says, still staring at the blue and yellow logo.

“Oh.” He drops his arm, still holding the other box. He looks disappointed. Niall sighs, shifting on his feet.

He’s about to say something when a car door slams from the parking lot. They both look over. Some guy is leaning out the driver’s side, waving at them.

“Wait here,” The guy instructs. He takes a step forward like he’s about to physically keep Niall there, before he turns and hurries towards the car.

Niall counts to fifteen in his head before he leaves.

-

Bobby’s truck is the in driveway when he makes it home. The rain has let up by now, but Niall is still drenched, his jeans stiff where they cling to his legs. His shirt is stained from the runoff of his mousse, long jagged lines of makeup down his chest.

He’d gotten lost on his way home, wondering in the rain until he found a street that looked familiar.

He slips his shoes off outside the door. He can hear Bobby banging around in the kitchen. The door clicks shut softly when Niall leans his weight on it. His bare feet make no noise on the carpeted hallway. He’s carrying his shoes in one hand, the box of macaroni in the other.

A pot crashes to floor. Niall freezes, hand tightening around the banister of the staircase.

“Niall, come in here.”

He quickens his pace up the stairs, rushing into his room. Peeling the wet clothes off his body is difficult, and he struggles with getting his jeans off. He leaves the clothes in a pile on his floor, the water seeping into the carpet.

The tub of mousse is sitting on his bedside table.

He stares at it, standing in the middle of the room, his face smeared and runny from the rain. 

He moves without realizing it, a strangled cry escaping as the desk upends. The lamp shatters when it smashes on the floor, tiny shards of glass spreading outwards from the crash. The drawer opens, the contents spilling out over the floor, little paper notes and candy bar wrappers.

He stands in the wreckage, naked except for his pants. Time stills for a moment while he stands there, before it all comes rushing back to him like the impact of the car. Not just the events of the day – but before, the violent crash that ripped his world apart, and after, the space of time when he hovered between life and death.

He’s not sure there’s an end to it.

Bobby is at his door with a shout of his name, rushing into the room just in time to catch Niall as his knees give out.

He doesn’t cry – this body isn’t capable of crying, but he is hyperventilating. He knows this feeling, the panic settling over his body like a familiar wave. Bobby is saying something to him, but he can’t make out the words. All he can feel is the tightness under his chest, the rattling of his lungs being forced to work when they don’t need to, like rusty hinges on a door.

It’s a long time before his able to pull himself out of it. He’s gripping Bobby’s shirt with both hands, tugging the fabric out of place. Bobby’s arms are tight around him, one on his back and the other in his hair. His voice is low and soothing, the way he used to speak to Niall as a child when he was sick.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Niall chokes. He’s too weak to look him in the eyes, buries in his face in the steady strength of his father’s chest.

“It’s alright, son. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

He doesn’t realize that Bobby is crying as well until much later, when he feels strong enough to pull out of his embrace. His father’s face is blotchy and red, swollen from the tears, and he knows his would look the same way if he were still alive. The curse of the Horan’s.

“Niall,” He says, reaching out to touch him in some way, but Niall avoids it, pushing himself back until he’s out of reach.

“I should clean this up.” He mutters, awkwardly scrambling to his feet. The lamp is broken with no hope of repair, and the drawer is bent so that it won’t close all the way.

“Niall,” Bobby says again, behind him. Niall doesn’t turn or acknowledge him. “This is why I didn’t want you to leave the house.”

Like that, Niall’s anger has returned just as sharp. He still refuses to say anything, focusing instead on gathering the mess from the floor without looking too closely at any of the slips of paper from his school days.

After ten minutes of silence, Bobby leaves, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Niall sinks into his bed, too aware of the way his body doesn’t fit comfortably into his room like he used to. He drifts into an uneasy sleep, dreams of driving a car so fast and so far he doesn’t recognize where he is.

-

“You got me a nanny?”

Niall had just managed to make his way downstairs this morning when he’d run into his father standing by the door in his work clothes, Liam Payne standing awkwardly next to him. Bobby and Liam were discussing something in soft tones, but they both stopped talking when the stairs creaked under Niall’s weight. Bobby had then proceeded to explain that Liam was here to ‘hang out’ for a little while, until he returned from work.

He shrugs, paying more attention to buttoning his coat than his own son.

“Dad.”

Bobby sighs, the disappointed, exasperated sigh of parents everywhere. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving you alone, Niall.” The unspoken not after yesterday.

Liam is sitting on the couch, messing around on his phone, pretending not to eavesdrop. Niall glances over at him.

“The world’s changed, son. Things aren’t the way they were when you were alive.” Niall’s shoulders stiffen. On the couch, Liam’s fingers have stopped moving on the screen. “It’s dangerous.”

“I don’t need a babysitter.”

“He’s not. He’s your friend.”

Liam Payne was never his friend – at least, not in the traditional sense. Sure, he was a nice kid, if a little awkward, but he ran with different crowds than Niall did.

They were paired up on a science project once. They got a 70.

Bobby leaves, ignoring Niall’s futile protests all the way out the door.

When Niall drops onto the couch next to Liam, he’s playing some game on his phone with little candy icons. Niall watches him until he loses.

It’s odd, sitting next to a kid who was five years younger the last time he saw him. Liam has filled out now, bigger than Niall in every direction, gotten rid of the Bieber haircut. He’s got a beard now. And tattoos.

“Mum works at the nursing home.” Liam says. He still hasn’t looked at Niall yet, instead staring at the dark screen of his phone. Niall wasn’t expecting him to speak, and he jumps a little at the sound of his voice. “She’s treats a lot of rot – oh erm, I mean PDS sufferers.” Liam blushes a brilliant shade of red. He clears his throat. “I know you lot aren’t dangerous like the church is tryin’ to convince everyone.” He looks up at a sincere smile on his face. “I know you didn’t ask for this to happen.”

It’s not the best speech Niall has ever heard, but it does ease the ball of nervous resting in his chest. He gives Liam his perfected half-smile, and it comes a little easier this time.

“Thanks.” Niall drags his nail along the seam of the couch. It makes a noise every time his nail catches on the edge. “You don’t have to stay, Liam. You can leave if you want to.” He looks up around the room.

Liam shrugs a little. “It’s fine. Not like I’ve got much else to do.” He fidgets a little, unlocking and locking his phone screen. “Mum’s still pretty worried about the untreated wondering about, now that the HVF has officially disbanded.”

“HVF?”

“Yeah, you know,” Liam’s head is tilted, his thick eyebrows drawn together in confusion. Niall shakes his head. “Oh, they’re the – uh – Human Volunteer Force. They basically just like, kept the rest of us safe? I wanted to join, but I got put on wall duty. Dead boring, that was, but someone’s got to do it.” Liam blinked and shook his head, clearing that line of thought away. “Anyway, the HVF, they were the ones out there keeping the undead away. Until the cure came along, and the government ordered the end of the war. You really don’t know about this?”

Again, Niall shakes his head.

“People were well annoyed when the government ordered that, since they were the ones keeping everyone safe. Loads of people wanted them to keep going, but most of the members dropped out until there wasn’t anyone left.”

“Who were they?”

“Just regular citizens. Anyone who could handle a gun. There was about fifteen of them at the end.”

Niall frowns. “No one really told us anything about what was going on outside the Treatment Center.”

“Oh.” Liam turns on the couch, tucking one leg under his thigh to face Niall fully. “Well, what else do you wanna know?”

Liam fills him in on what happened during the Rising, the government shut down. The bigger cities fell faster than the smaller communities in the country. He was in Brighton when it happened. It took him three weeks to get home.

He warns Niall about who to stay away from in town, which families haven’t been so welcoming to those recovering, and which homes have PDS suffers of their own in them.

“My neighbor is like you. I don’t really know him that well, but.” Liam trails off and shrugs again. He’s done that a lot today, second-guessing what he’s saying, giving his words less weight.

Niall shifts his attention away from Liam to the picture hanging about the mantel. It’s an old picture, taken before the divorce. Niall was six. His hair was still brown.

They look so happy, his family. His father’s arm is around his mother’s shoulders, both of them grinning at the camera. Niall and his brother dressed in slacks and button downs, gap toothed and freckled in their youth. It’s a memory of family that no longer exists. After everything that’s happened, his father has never taken it down.

Liam catches his gaze lingering on the photograph.

“You’ve got a brother?”

Niall looks away. “Yeah.” Liam gets up from the couch, walking over to the wall to examine the picture. He’s smiling, the first time all afternoon that he’s relaxed.

“What happened to them?” He inclines his head to speak to Niall, but keeps his eyes on the picture.

“They’re around. Like, alive. Don’t really talk to Greg or my mum.”

Liam turns away from the picture. “Why not?” There’s a little frown tugging the corners of his lips down, mirrored with the little dip created from the crease of his eyebrows.  
Niall looks upward, searching for some way out of this conversation. “Because they’re alive?” He puffs out a little humorless chuckle.

Liam shuffles back to his seat on the couch. He’s biting the inside of his check. Niall stares at the ceiling, counts the seconds until Liam talks. 131.

“I think.” He starts, slow. He’s always thinking so hard about what he’s saying. “That people forget. That you have families.” He glances to the picture. “They’re so afraid they don’t stop to think about who you are.”

“Liam. I killed people.”

“So did they.” He answers fiercely. 

They both settle back into their seats, an awkward silence following. He had realized how long they’d been talking until the conversation ended.

He cleared his throat. “What game were you playing?” He asks, nodding at Liam’s phone resting between them.

After that, Liam becomes a fixture in the Horan House. He comes over every day, despite Niall’s many and loud protests that there must be something better for him to do with his time. Liam dismisses him each time.

He won’t say it out loud, but it nice to have some company other than Bobby. And he’s gotten quite good at Candy Crush now.

-

Niall meets Harry two weeks after Liam’s semi-permanent presence in his life.

Liam is fidgeting at the door, twisting the button of his coat one way and then back the other. He scratches behind his ear, peers out the window through the crack in the curtains, and reties his left boot.

“Relax, Liam.” Niall’s lip twitch upwards. “We’ll be back long before he gets home. Plus, this was your idea.” Liam fixes him with a look that’s meant to be his Serious Face, which Niall is quickly learning means he’s about to go along with the plan he disapproves of. “Think of it as a secret mission.” He winks, throwing a beanie on over his head. He’s got the pair of faux glasses that Liam bought specifically for this outing. They look a bit awkward with the hat, and he still mostly looks like himself, but hopefully it’ll be enough of a disguise that his identity won’t be immediately connected.

Liam sighs, but he wraps a scarf around his neck regardless. It’s a rare sunny day, warm enough that the walk through town will be enjoyable.

“I really don’t know much about this fellow. He’s quite odd, from what my mum says. Always wearing a hat.” Liam shrugs. “Figure it’d be nice to know someone else like you, even if they are a bit of a nutter.”

“We’ll create a hand signal. If things get too weird and we need to bail.” Niall suggests. Liam rolls his eyes, but he comes up with a complicated knuckle tap regardless.

Liam’s house is in a different part of town, a few neighborhoods away from the place Niall grew up. The walk is pleasant enough, sunny and mild, but Niall sticks close to Liam, keeping his head down. They stay off the main roads as much as possible.

The neighborhoods start to change, the house slowly getting closer together, leaving significantly less room in the garden. Where Niall’s home is in a quiet cul-de-sac, fenced in with plenty of room to spread out, everything here is cramped and falling apart. Even the sidewalk has deep cracks in it.

“Some neighborhoods were hit harder by the raids.” Liam explains sheepishly. He doesn’t meet Niall’s eye, staring at his shoes as they walk. A dog barks in the distance.

They stop at a small one-story house near the end of the road. It’s more secluded down here, barely any of the houses look occupied. The house they’re standing in front of is grey, but shutters are painted light purple, and there are at least three garden gnomes hidden among the untamed grass. A portion of the house has been recently painted over in sloppy white strokes. Niall can just make out the black letters underneath: rotter. 

“Some of the people weren’t too pleased when he moved in.” Liam is frowning at the same spot. “He mostly keeps to himself. I don’t see who he’s bothering.”

Liam walks up to the door first, Niall following after he tears his eyes away from the graffiti. There are potted plants lining the porch, and a little rocking chair on the far side. The wood sinks under their combined weight, groaning with every little movement.

Niall tries the doorbell, but when nothing happens, they both reach to knock on the door. There’s a crash from inside, a low voice swearing, before the door swings open. Niall takes two quick steps back, catching his foot on a loose plank. He grabs the railing to keep from falling over.

“Liam!” The man greets, a huge grin on his face as he opens his arms for a hug. Liam declines the hug, patting him on the shoulder instead, but he’s smiling at him in a familiar way.

“Harry, this is Niall.” Liam introduces, gesturing at Niall to come closer. Harry looks away from Liam then to turn his grin on Niall.

His face is bare, eyes huge and white, lifeless.

“Well, come on in.” 

-

The three of them are sat at Harry’s kitchen table. The inside of the house is cozy and inviting, despite the mismatched exterior. Liam and Harry have been chatting idly for the past fifteen minutes – Harry tells extremely long and pointless stories, so that by the end Liam has forgotten what they were originally talking about, and he quickly changes the subject.

Niall has stayed silent. He can’t look away from Harry’s face.

“Does it bother you that I’m bare?” Harry asks suddenly, abruptly ending the conversation with Liam. He’s still looking at Liam when he says it, but he slowly turns his focus on Niall. His gaze is intense; more so with his dead stare than otherwise.

Liam coughs twice, looking down at his hands. “Perhaps I’ll just – ” He gestures to the door, not waiting for an acknowledgement before hurrying out of the room.

Niall keeps unflinching eye contact with Harry. He’s remembers the deadeye stare from the other patients at the Treatment Center, but it’s a shock to see them on someone outside. His skin is ashy pale, the veins on his hands and face now visible under the skin where the blood rests instead of moving through his body. Unlike Trevor, he doesn’t sit unnaturally sit or display any hostile attitudes. He’s actually rather nice, from what Niall has seen.

None of this makes any sense.

“I don’t know why you’d do that.” He answers finally. His own skin is the chemically perfect tone he’d been assigned, applied evenly and smoothly every morning. Most days, Niall can pretend this is how he looks naturally.

This is how he’s meant to look. Not how he was before. Not like Harry.

Harry looks incredible sad, his whole body sagging into the emotion. “Oh, dear.” He says in that quiet, slow way.

“Doesn’t it bother other people?” He tries not to snap, body tense. He glances at the door Liam disappeared through. He’s most likely hovering right out of sight, listening to every word they say.

Harry shrugs, shoulders loose. His whole demeanor changes, the sad, pitying way he was looking at Niall before melts away to the casually challenging way he’s holding his gaze now. “Why do I care if they’re offend by my natural form?”

Niall shakes his head. “Because there are people out there trying to kill us?” He gestures to the window. Outside, the sun is bright, the grass growing back in the lack of frost as winter melts into spring. A bird chirps as it flies by. Harry raises a skeptical eyebrow. Niall scowls. “Because they’re still convinced we’ll turn at any moment. You aren’t helping anyone by going out like that.” 

“This is how we’re meant to look.” He’s calm, but there’s a satisfied little smirk hiding in the corner of his face. “The Rising wasn’t a curse, Niall, it was a gift.” He leans over the table, dead eyes wide, as if he’s divulging a crucial secret. “It’s a second chance at life. Why spend your time hating yourself and trying to hide what you are? You shouldn’t have to. You have every right to be natural.” He spreads his arms wide, leaning back in his chair, offering Niall the world.

Niall shakes his head, laughing a hysterical, unbelieving chuckle. He pushes out of his chair. He’s restless, excess energy making him twitchy and nervous. He rubs a hand over his cheeks, pacing a bit front of the table. “This is not how the world works.”

“Maybe that’s just the way they want the world to work.” Harry tips his head to the side like he’s made some grand point.

“You sound just like – ” Niall stops. Harry quirks a brow. “Just, some guy I knew. At the T.C.” Niall glares pointedly at Harry’s bare face. 

Harry rolls his eyes. He does it the same way he speaks, slow and lazy, like he’s got all the time in the world. Every word and gesture indicates a comfortable ease in how he lives. “Hiding your face has nothing to do with the treatments.” He leans in his chair, balancing on the back legs. “This is who you are, Niall. We’re not the only ones. There’s more of us than you think.”

Harry stands then and walks to a drawer. There’s a little notepad shaped like bumblebee. He scribbles something down on the first pages, rips it off and folds in half. “We meet every Thursday if you’re interested.” He says when he turns back to face Niall. He holds out the note. “Come spend some time with your people.”

Niall eyes the slip of paper wearily, but he accepts it after a moment, tucking it into his front pocket.

Harry smiles at him, still as welcoming and warm as he was at the beginning. It’s significantly less genuine this time. Niall gets the distinct impression he’s being disarmed. 

“Liam, you can come back in now.” He calls. His gaze never wavers, white, unblinking eyes zeroed in on Niall’s face. Every person at the Treatment Center who wore his or her face bare had a lifeless quality them, like coma patients still waking up. Harry doesn’t have that. Every thing about him seems alive except his eyes.

Niall blinks at him.

Liam coughs awkwardly as he shuffles back into the room.

“Think we’re done here.” Harry says. He walks them towards the door, a hand resting on both their backs. “Liam knows how to get in contact with me if you need anything. Nice to meet you, Niall.”

-

“Well, that went better than I expected.” Liam says. Harry’s words are still bouncing around in Niall’s head, and he glances over his shoulder. They’ve been walking for a few minutes, long losing sight of Harry’s house.

“What did you expect to happen? Thought we were gonna turn rabid on you?” Niall nudges Liam.

Liam scowls. “No.” He elbows Niall back, hard enough that Niall stumbles over his feet. Liam grabs his arm before he tumbles into the road. A car passes them, the only one on this road, kicking up dust and rocks in its wake. “I just meant he was nice?”

Niall rolls his eyes. “Oh yeah, he was a joy.”

“He was. You’re just sour cause he didn’t agree with you.”

“Don’t tell me you think he’s right.”

“Course not.” Liam shrugs.

Niall is interrupted from anything else he might say when the black truck ahead of them pulls off the road. Liam shoves Niall behind him with one arm, shielding his body from view. The driver’s side door opens, and a young man climbs out of the car.

“Hiya.” It’s the boy from the market. He doesn’t have his maroon beanie today, his hair a long and unstyled mess. He brushes it out of his eyes when a breeze ruffles it, tucking his hands into his front pockets and rocking on his feet.

“Hey, Louis.” Liam says, relaxing. He waves a little at him, taking a few steps forward. The road they’re on isn’t a main route through town. There’s nothing surrounding the road but abandoned farmlands, not even a cow or sheep to keep them company.

Niall follows Liam a few paces back.

“What’s up?” He asks once he stops next to Louis’ truck. He leans his hip against the bed. “You working?”

Louis shakes his head. “Nope. Just a delivery.” He pats the tarp covering the back of the truck. “Saw you two walking. Thought I’d offer a ride?” Louis looks up at Niall as he says it.

“Sure,” Liam answers just as Niall is preparing to say no.

“Liam – ” Niall jumps forward to catch his sleeve, but Liam’s too far away, already jogging around the truck to the passenger’s side.

“It’s fine. He’s a friend. Plus we have to get home before your dad does.”

Louis offers him a small, private smile. Niall says nothing as he climbs into the back of the truck.

Liam is happily buckling into his seat when Niall closes the door. “Louis, this is Niall Horan. Niall, Louis.” Louis turns back onto the road, looking up to meet Niall’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, we’ve met.”

“Oh?” Liam sounds pleased. Niall tugs at his sleeve, folding his fingers into the cuffs.

Liam fiddles with the dials on the radio while he quietly instructs Louis where to go. Louis keeps tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, glancing into the mirror to watch Niall every few minutes.

Niall stays quiet, pressing his face against the window. He closes his eyes and lets Liam’s attempts at small talk wash over him. It’s been a long day.

“So, you and Niall know each other from school?” Louis asks. Liam hums his answer, paying more attention to flipping through the stations on the radio. Most of it comes back as static. Every so often he’ll land on a station where they can just make out some garbled words over the static.

“We played pee wee footie together as kids.”

“Really?” Both Liam and Louis turn their heads to look at him. “I don’t remember that.”

“Yup. You were terrible, always getting distracted.” Liam laughs over Niall’s protests. Even Louis joins the teasing.

“Better watch it, I could easily kick your ass now, Payne.” Niall huffs. Liam scoffs.

“Ooh, yeah, I’m so scared.”

“I don’t know, Liam, he may be small but they’re the ones you gotta watch out for. Fast.” Louis winks at him in the mirror. Niall nods in Louis’ direction.

“See. He knows.”

“You wanna bet?”

No one ever warned Niall about Liam’s fierce competitive streak. As it turns out, Louis’ got one just as mean.

Somehow, this translates to three of them in Niall’s back garden playing one-on-one for the better part of the afternoon. By the end, all three of them are covered in dirt and grass, and Liam and Louis are sweating through their shirts. They’d given up on the game pretty quickly, spending most of the time showing off tricks with the ball.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Horan.” Louis says, shaking his head. He accepts the glass of water Niall hands him, chugging half of it down in one go. Niall watches the way his throat works.

Niall grins. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to smooth it back into place from where it’s sticking up. “Sure, let me know the last time Donny was able beat more than three teams a season.” Louis narrows his eyes, flicking a bit of water from his glass at him. Niall ducks, laughing. “How did you even end up supporting them?”

“I grew up there.”

“How’d you end up here, then?”

Louis shifts in his seat, watching the water as he swirls glass in tiny circles. “I’ll always be a Rover at heart.” Louis holds a hand over his chest.

“Guess that’s the sign of a true fan, supporting them even when they suck.”

Liam’s not said a word, lying under the shade of a tree at the other end of the garden. He lost his shirt at some point.

Louis falls into the chair next to Niall. “You better watch it, Horan.” He grins at him, a pleased little twitch of his mouth, before he tips his head back, eyes slipping closed. Clouds have slowly rolled in over the afternoon, casting Louis’ face in shadow whenever a cloud obscures the sun. Niall watches the play of light, content to let silence rest.

When Louis speaks, his voice is a low rasp. “Listen, about the whole,” he waves his hand, “grocery store thing.” He doesn’t pick his head up, but he does open one eye to peer at Niall.

Niall licks his lower lip, looking away. Liam still hasn’t moved from him spot under the tree. “She probably would’ve shot me if you weren’t there.”

“Nah.” Louis’ voice is forcefully casual. His posture is still relaxed, but Niall can feel him watching like he was back in the truck. There’s something heavier in Louis’ gazes, something that feels significant. Niall’s never been so painfully aware of someone looking at him before. “Most people are too scared to pull the trigger. The gun is just for show.”

“And yours?” Niall meets his eyes dead on.

Louis’ smirk is snakelike, curled tight across his lips, a warning. “I’m not afraid to shoot.”

Niall doesn’t look away. The message is clear. “Either way,” he says, “I’m glad you were there.”

“Yeah,” Louis says. “Me too.”

-

“How do you know Louis?” Niall is watching Liam is making himself a snack out of the contents of Niall’s fridge. Bobby’s not meant to be home for another hour. Louis had left ten minutes ago, hurrying out with quick goodbye and a half joking promise to return soon.

Liam shakes his head where he’s assembling his sandwich. “Everyone knows Louis.” He hums a little tune as he works. “He was part of the HVF. Don’t know him that well, really, but he’s a nice enough bloke.” He looks up at Niall then, popping his thumb into his mouth to lick a bit of sauce off the tip of his finger. “You had fun today right?”

“Sure.”

Liam settles in the seat across from Niall at the table. He pops the tab on a can of soda, spraying drops of the dark liquid on the tabletop. Niall wipes away the little droplets with his middle finger one at a time. “Never met him before the Rising.” He takes a large bite of his sandwich before continuing, talking through his mouthful. “Only after I got home. By then, the HVF had already been organized.”

Niall chews on his thumbnail. There’s a strip of skin ripped away from the nail. He hadn’t known that the undead had to deal with hangnails as well.

Liam frowns, staring hard at the crumbs on his plate. “He’s not very good at following the rules. Was always sneaking out past the wall at night. And he never came to the town meetings.” He picks at the crust on his sandwich, tearing off a small piece, wiping up the leftover sauce off the plate. “But he was good at his job, so.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just,” Niall drums his fingertips on the table, trying to form his thoughts into a coherent sentence. “What does he get out of this? Offering a ride, hanging out and playing footie with us?”

Liam sighs. “Niall, the Rising was hard on everyone.” He finishes the last bite of his sandwich. “Maybe he wanted to relax. Free time to hang out is hard to come by for most people.”

“That’s all I’ve been doing since I got home.” He grumbles. Liam tilts his head sympathetically.

“Try talking to Bobby? There’s probably a something for you to do.”

Turns out he gets to speak to Bobby about it much sooner than he anticipated.

Bobby comes home that night storming through the front door, face dark. He bangs a pamphlet on the table in front of Niall, shaking table on its the weakened legs.

Partially Deceased Syndrome Sufferer It says in bright colorful letters across the top. Give Back To Your Community! Under the letters, there’s a picture of two young girls grinning at the camera, arms around the others’ shoulders.

“What’s this?” Niall asks, flipping to the inside cover. Attend, Participate, Integrate.

Bobby grunts, his head halfway inside the fridge digging for food. “Found on my car when I left work today. Some stupid program they want you to attend.”

“What for?” There’s information about different projects to join on the inside flap. Rebuild the Wall, Untreated PDS Search Party, Trash Removal, Collection Service.

Bobby slams the door shut. There’s a crash as something tumbles out of the side drawer. “What it is, is a bunch of political bullshit. I don’t like it one bit.” He’s holding Tupperware container of tuna casserole. Judging by the smell, it’s gone bad a month ago.

“Dad.” Niall says, rolling his eyes as he takes the container out of his dad’s hands, dumping the contents down the sink. Bobby doesn’t protest, taking over the vacant seat at the table to angrily flip through the pamphlet. Niall pulls down a pot to fill with water, turning the stove on medium heat while he waits for the pot to fill.

“They treat prisoners better than this.” He rants as he waves the pamphlet around. Niall leans against the counter as the water heats up.

“It’s easier if I just show up and do it, if it’s mandatory.”

Bobby scowls.

“It’s fine, dad, I’ll just get Liam to go with me.”

-

“Sorry,” The man says, holding out an arm to keep both Liam and Niall back. “Rules clearly state this is a PDS sufferer and volunteer supervisor attendance only meeting.” Niall doesn’t recognize him, but it’s obvious that Liam does. He knocks the man’s arm away from him.

“I am a volunteer supervisor.” Liam says.

“Your name isn’t on the list.”

“I don’t see what difference it makes.” He spits angrily.

“Liam,” Niall says, pulling him gently by the arm away from the entrance. There’s a line forming behind them, other PDS sufferers lining up for the meeting. They shuffle in wordlessly, a few of their expressions are tense, scared. “It’s alright. I’ll just meet up after, yeah? Shouldn’t take too long.” Liam is still glaring at the guard by the door, but he reluctantly nods.

Niall recognizes a few of the faces inside, including Harry, who is sitting in the back row surrounded by a group who are also bare faced. The supervisors standing by the front of the room are keeping an anxious watch on them, glancing blatantly in their direction.

Harry waves him over when he catches his eye. He’s got a large hat on today, his shirt nearly unbuttoned down to the center of his chest, displaying a collection of faded tattoos and a line of hastily stitched up scars. Niall’s suddenly deathly curious about how Harry died.

He would rather not make any enemies today, though. He waves back, walking to a row of empty seats near the front, choosing a chair at the end of the row, far enough back that he won’t draw too much attention to himself.

Louis is standing near the back with another guy, heads bent close together, whispering to each other. He doesn’t notice Niall.

The meeting is dead boring. There’s a cheesy training video introduction, wheeled out on an ancient tv, featuring a two actors pretending to have PDS. They throw around some buzz words about giving back to the community, about the importance of reintegrating into the new world, and how they should all be thankful for this opportunity. It’s hard for him to stay focused, not only because it’s mind numbingly dull, but because he keeps sneaking looks over at Louis.

Whatever conversation he’s having with his friend must be important. He hardly looks up at the ongoing presentation. Niall has never seen this guy around before. It’s strange and isolating. Having grown up in such a small town like this, he had gotten used to knowing everyone. Now most of the faces he sees are unrecognizable to him. No one at the T.C. warned him about this part – feeling like a stranger in his own skin, being an outsider now when he used to fit seamlessly in before.

Whoever Louis’ partner is, he must be part of the HVF. Bobby had mentioned they would likely be the ones organizing this meeting, and Louis’ presence here pretty much confirms that suspicion. Whatever the intention of this meeting is, the HVF are behind it.

Once the video has ended, two women take over, standing at the front of the room. One is holding up a dirty orange vest and the other is pointing to a complicated flow chart. They’re haltingly attempting to explain how the system works. Talking over each other about the requirements that each PDS sufferer to “give back” a certain numbers of hours per week to the community and the benefits that come with such a rewarding program.

Niall is trying to make sense of it all when someone slides into the empty seat behind him.

“Are you taking notes? This is very important stuff here.” Louis whispers. Niall smirks, but he doesn’t turn immediately to look at Louis.

“Do you mind, I’m trying to pay attention.” He whispers back. Louis kicks at the leg of his seat, but he leans into his space to talk to him.

“You enjoying yourself?”

Niall nods slowly.

“Louis,” One of the women at the front sharply interrupts her colleague. She dressed in an ill-fitting, wrinkled brown business suit, her greying hair pulled into a bun at the base of her neck. She’s not glaring at the two of them, but there’s something in her gaze that makes Niall feel reprimanded regardless. “Why don’t you come up here and introduce yourself?” She gives him a thin-lipped smile.

Louis groans, pushing out of his chair with the same irritation as a petulant teenager. As he stands, he lets his fingers brush against the back of Niall’s neck. It makes him want to shiver, though he doesn’t feel the sensation.

“Well.” Louis claps his hands together in front of him. He’s smirking at the group. “I’m Louis.” That’s all he says before he turns to walk away, but the women grabs him by the arm, turning him back to face the crowd.

“Louis is one of our volunteer supervisors. He’s here to oversee some of the many projects we have planned for you.” She flashes a toothy, politician smile, but there’s a tightness around her eyes, like she’s barely restraining herself. No one in the audience reacts. “Louis is a valuable member of our community.” She’s holding him in place with a hand on his of his shoulders, and she squeezes when she says the last part. “The work he did for the Human Volunteer Force saved the lives of so many.”

Louis is just barely refraining from rolling his eyes, posture uncomfortable, stiff.

“You all have a lot to learn from someone like him.”

The meeting wraps up fairly quickly after that. Niall is itching to make his escape and find Liam again.

He’s intercepted at the exit by an old teacher of his, Ms. Dawson. She was always a soft-spoken, slightly awkward person, but death seems to have served her well. Her hair is down in long curls, her face relaxed in an easy smile. She’s one of Harry’s crew - not wearing any makeup or contacts. Niall avoids making eye contact with her while she talks to him.

Harry is hovering just over Ms. Dawson’s shoulder. Niall watches in his periphery as he flits from group to group, all in close distance to their conversation. It takes less than five minutes for him to finally interrupt, slinging a casual arm around Ms. Dawson’s shoulders. He smiles at her, his disarming, easy grin. “Hello Janet.” He greets. If Ms. Dawson weren’t dead, she would be blushing. “Niall,” He nods his greeting at him. The way he says his name makes Niall think Ms. Dawson wasn’t just looking to catch up with an old student.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to it.” She says.

Niall waits until she’s far out of earshot to say something. “What do you want, Harry.”

He rolls his shoulders back in an imitation of a shrug. “Thought I’d say hi to my new friend.”

Whatever it is that Harry wants to talk to Niall about, he never gets the chance. Louis and his whisper mate practically knock the two of them over as they’re rushing towards the door. Harry hardly stumbles, but Niall goes down hard before he can catch his balance.

Louis doesn’t offer to help him up like he had the first time they met. Instead, he starts laughing, a loud, annoyingly endearing cackle. His friend’s expression is torn between a deep frown and amusement. Niall grumbles as he hoists himself up, wiping the dirt off the back of his jeans.

Harry says nothing, his expression blank. His back is tense, arms crossed defensively over his chest. His posture is so at odds with his casually charming demeanor moments ago.

“Good meeting, eh Niall.” Louis says. There’s still a hint of laughter on his face, and Niall can’t detect if it’s meant to be mocking. He shrugs instead of saying anything.

His friend is standing away from little group they’ve formed, four points of a lopsided square.

“Lou,” He says, voice low. He nods at the door, tugging at Louis’ elbow.

“In a minute, Zayn.” Louis brushes him off. To Niall and Harry he says, “so are you excited to ‘give back’? It’s such a great opportunity, you know, to thank the community.” Harry’s jaw twitches. Niall curls his fingers into a fist.

“Louis.” Zayn’s voice is sharp. He tugs harder at Louis’ elbow, hard enough to pull him a step backwards. Louis ignores him.

“Me and Zayn are supervisors, yeah. That means you have to do what we say.” The smirk from Niall’s garden is back now. It’s no less threatening in this context. “It’s a learning experience.”

“Louis.” Niall cuts in. Louis finally stops, blinking at Niall. There’s no laughter in him now. Zayn is staring hard at Louis’ profile, but Niall doesn’t miss the second his eyes flicker to him. He tugs at him again, and this time Louis lets himself be dragged away. Niall keeps his eyes on him until he’s out of sight, refusing to look at Harry.

“Charming guy.” He says.

Niall swallows down his initial urge to defend Louis. “Yeah.”

-

The morning Niall is supposed to start the Give Back Program, Louis shows up at his house before dawn.

Niall is in his bed, curled under his covers, hovering in that state between asleep and awake, practicing the exercises from the Treatment Center to keep his thoughts empty. Dr. Gill used to warn them that the morning would always be the hardest time to avoid those memories, the time they’re most vulnerable to slip into unwanted territory.

He hears the familiar rumble of Louis’ truck pulling up to the front door before he registers what it is. When he finally lifts his head from his pillow to look out his window, Louis is leaning against his car, arms crossed. He’s staring at Niall’s window.

Niall frowns, grabbing a shirt and pulling on a pair of jeans off his floor. He’s gotten well practiced in putting his contacts in, but it takes him a few minutes to apply the mousse.

By the time he’s finished, the shower is running. Bobby doesn’t have to leave for another forty minutes, which gives Niall about fifteen minutes to find out what Louis wants. He creeps past the bathroom, trying to stay quiet as he slips out the front door.

Louis doesn’t look surprised to see him. He tips his head in greeting, but doesn’t move away from the car.

“What are you doing?” Niall asks, rubbing at his arms. He’s not cold, but it helps ground him.

“I’m here to collect you for work.” Louis wiggles his eyebrows, that ever-present smirk on his face. Niall bites down on his grin. It’s still early enough that the sky is a murky mix of blue and grey. Louis is a dark silhouette against the brightening sky.

“Aren’t I supposed to get assigned where I work?” Niall crosses his arms over his chest.

Louis waves a dismissive hand, pushing off his truck to walk closer to Niall. “Special mission.” Niall looks up, shifting on his feet and narrowing his eyes at the horizon, pretending to consider it. They both know he’s going to agree. “Come on, now, no arguing with your supervisor.”

Louis reaches out to grip his wrist. It’s the first time they’ve had physical contact since the grocery store. Niall fights not to flinch out of his touch.

“Alright. Let me leave a note for my dad. Give me ten minutes?”

Louis grins. “Alright.” Niall nods, still biting down on his smile. Louis shoos him, waving at him until he turns back into his house. He grabs a sweatshirt to pull on, shoves his feet into the nearest pair of shoes his can find, and quickly scribbles down a note for his dad.

Louis is waiting in his truck by the time Niall has finished.

“Seven minutes. Impressive.” Louis says when Niall slides in the passenger seat.

“So what is this special mission you needed me for?”

“Telling you would ruin the fun for me.” Niall laughs. He’s starting to learn it’s better to let Louis do things on his own rather than try to force something out of him.

They drive around for a while. Louis keeps stopping at seemingly random places – a hardware store, the little café in the town center, a few houses. He’ll run inside, leaving the car running while Niall sits and fiddles with the radio, trying to find some station that works. He’s never longer than ten minutes, but by the fifth stop, Niall is getting impatient.

“Am I only along for the company?” He asks. He tries to pose it as a joke, but it falls flat. Louis does laugh, rolling his head to look at him for a moment.

“As brilliant as your company is, Horan, no, that’s not why I brought you along.”

Niall picks at a bit of peeling plastic on the door. “Then why am I here?”

Louis bites his lip, tapping his fingers on the wheel. Niall has the urge to reach over to put his hand over Louis’ to stop the tapping. He wonders if that’s how people feel around him when he fidgets.

“Figured riding along with me was better than whatever they had planned for you.”

“So I am here because you like me.” This time he gets the teasing tone right.

Louis rolls his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Horan. If you’d like, I can always swing by and drop you off.”

Niall grins. “No. I like it better here.” To prove his point, he wiggles deeper into the plush leather seats.

Louis tries to hide his smile. Niall’s gotten better at recognizing what that looks like on him.

“What were you doing at all those places?” He asks it casually. There’s a thin line here that he can’t cross with Louis, but he’s got no clue where that line is. He’s searching blindly for his limits.

“Inventory.” Louis’ voice is even.

“For what?”

“Guns. I’m in charge of keeping track of the supply of guns. Making sure everyone has what they’re supposed to have.”

“All of those places have guns in them?”

“Mhm.”

The gun inventory lasts two hours. Niall now has a mental checklist of all the places to avoid.

“Now the fun part.” The longer the inventory lasted, the more withdrawn Louis seemed to get. He’s either shaken himself out of it, or putting on a good show of pretending. “We’re doing a perimeter check.” He grins then, like that should mean something to Niall.

“So?”

Louis sighs, put upon. “Every day someone is assigned a place where the fence isn’t finished, or in need of rebuilding. We check for the rabids. If we find any, we bring ‘em in to the hospital and wait for Treatment Center to come pick ‘em up. Pretty simple.”

Niall taps his fingers on his knee, right over the scar. “I thought the HVF was disbanded?”

“It was in name.” Louis’ speaks in that even tone again, but there’s something bitter about the way he says, “most of the people still do the same work as before.”

“With less shooting now, right?”

Louis doesn’t say anything.

He checks his phone for the section they’re meant to search. He curses under his breath, starts typing out something furiously in response with one hand. Niall tries to calm the swell of panic in him. He’s got the door handle in a death grip.

“Louis.” His voice is tight. Louis ignores him, angrily throwing the phone into the back seat and taking the wheel with two hands again.

It’s difficult to relax for the rest of the drive. They’re both quiet on the way to the very outskirts of the town, to the abandoned factory. It’s been abandoned for so long no one remembers what it was here for. The brick building stands out like a crumbling castle among the bare trees and dead grass. A graveyard for the forgotten past.

There’s no place to park close to the building because the ground is so overgrown. The older kids used to throw parties here, far enough away that the police and parents wouldn’t hear the noise. Niall went to a party here the day he died.

Louis is as apprehensive to go into the building as Niall is. He messes around with something in the bed of his truck while Niall stands off to the side. He pretends not to notice Louis slipping his gun into the back of his jeans.

The perimeter check is pretty mild. They circle the edge of the line of trees, Louis leading the way. He marks certain trees off with a small knife, craving an x into the bark. There seems to be checklist of things for him to do while they wonder around, but Niall can’t keep track of whatever it is he’s doing.

Neither of them talk, and the silence heightens the eerie atmosphere of the place. Eventually they come to a stop, Louis dusting off his hands on his thighs.

“Right, now we just need to look inside.”

The sun is starting to sink in the sky, and Niall would prefer to not be caught out here in the dark.

Most of the walls of the building have crumbled away so there are huge chunks missing. The whole ceiling has caved in, leaving the sky exposed. It’s shadowed and dusty inside, glass and trash scattered on the floor.

Louis stops in the middle of the room, eyes scanning the dark corners. Niall wonders off to a crumbled section of wall, hands roaming over the grimy bricks.

He never came here during his time untreated. He never got very far from the center of the town, but for any of the remaining rabid’s out there, this would be ideal.

Being untreated isn’t what the movies make it out to be – not the mindless, crazed drones of horror classics. It’s worse than all that. There’s still some primal thought process, leftover from whatever existed before, just enough consciousness to be fully aware of what’s happening, but not enough to still be human. There isn’t any concrete, intelligent thought when untreated. It’s more of a sense memory.

The hunger is the most glaring part of it. The first instinct. But there’s something else there as well. The doctors at the Treatment Center often talked about the untreated returning to the places of their deaths, as if this was some ghost story and all the dead had unfinished business and haunting to do.

But it wasn’t his death that had called to some hidden, deep part of Niall. It was his life. Many PDS sufferers report stumbling back to their homes, or the homes of loved ones.

Niall circles the room once, following the edge of the broken building. There’s no rabids there, but he does spook a rat hiding behind a pile of bricks.

Louis is stood in the same spot in the middle of the open space. Niall makes his way back over to him, still half watching the edges of the building.

He doesn’t realize something wrong until he’s right next to Louis.

He’s shaking when Niall steps close, eyes wide and unseeing, playing out a scene that Niall is not welcome to. “Lou,” He murmurs, voice quiet to keep from spooking him. He rests his hand on the curve of his elbow, gently, bringing him back from that memory.

Louis jerks away at first, stumbling back half a step, panicked. When his eyes catch Niall’s, his whole body wilts.

“Sorry,” He gives a shaky laugh, fingers twitching against his leg. His gaze jumps from Niall’s face to the empty spot in the middle of the room.

“It’s not real.” Niall whispers. He scuffs his shoe against the dusty floor. The sound echoes in the empty rafters. Louis blinks, his eyes wide but clear, locked on Niall. “Whatever you’re seeing. It’s not there.” He squirms under Louis’ focus but doesn’t look away. “Trust me.”

Louis’ mouth is parted, breath slow and even. He licks his lips, slowly, and then nods, just once. “Alright.” He nudges his hand against Niall’s, a clumsy bump of fingers. There’s a smile hiding in the corner of his lips. Niall twists their fingers together, tugging Louis into his space, until his warmth is pressed up against Niall’s cold body.

“It happens to me, too.” Niall says into Louis’ shoulder. Louis tightens his arms around Niall but doesn’t say anything. “I see things from Before. They’re just – memories. But they feel real.”

Louis pulls back from the embrace, but he stays close. 

“I hate tight spaces.” Niall ducks his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Reminds me of my coffin.”

“I watched a lot of my friends die.” Louis’ voice is quiet, hollow. He doesn’t look behind him, but Niall understands what’s he’s trying to say. “I had to kill some of them. Because, I thought they were – ” He breaks off, gasping a breath.

Niall takes a step forward, reaching for his hand again. “Let’s just get out of here.”

Leaving the abandoned factory eases the weight. Every step back to the car is lighter, makes it a little easier to breathe.

The wind has picked up, the trees bending towards the setting sun. Most of the branches are still bare in the early stages of spring, waiting for life to return.

“Should probably get you home.” Louis mumbles when they get to their truck. He’s not looking at Niall.

Niall presses into his space, hands on his hips as he leans into his warmth.

Kissing Louis is remarkably easy.

Niall misses, at first, when he moves in, ends up catching Louis’ tooth more than this lip. He doesn’t pull away though. Louis has gone completely still, a stark contrast to the way his body held fear moments ago. If he’s misread this situation, he wants at least one good kiss before it all goes to shit. Niall’s not ready to surrender this feeling yet.

He pulls back until their lips are barely touching, watching Louis through his half closed gaze, before pressing his lips firmly to his.

Louis doesn’t exactly melt into it the way Niall hoped he might, but he does relax enough that Niall doesn’t worry he’s going to be punched. His hands come up to clutch at Niall’s shoulders, holding tightly, like he hasn’t decided whether he wants to push him away or pull him closer. His eyes shutter close.

When Niall breaks away, Louis surges forward half a step before he catches himself. He shoves Niall back a few steps, not unkindly. His breath is shaky and thick in his chest and Niall can almost trace the quick beat of his heart.

There’s a smear of Niall’s mousse on the corner of Louis’ mouth. It’s a quiet pleasure, leaving a mark like that on Louis’ skin. He rubs the spot where the mark would be on his own body. When he drags his eyes back up to Louis’, Louis is staring at him.

“I didn’t want this to be another bad memory for us.” Niall says. He pauses, closes his eyes. “I’m sorry. I’ve ruined it haven’t I?”

Louis wets his lips. His eyes sketch patterns on Niall’s face from his eyes to lips and back again. “I – ” His voice breaks on that one vowel, and he clears his throat before trying again. “No. You haven’t.”

Niall nods once, twice. This is such a bad idea.

“Take me home, Tommo.” He says.

-

The doorbell rings in the middle of Bobby listening to music while he attempts to make lasagna, singing along loudly and off-key. Niall is supervising the cooking, which means he ends up doing the majority of the work.

“I’ll get it.” He says. Bobby waves him away, adding too much red sauce to the pan. Niall winces, but the bell goes off again and he hurries to the door before he is forced to watch any more damage happen to the food.

Rosie is standing at the other side of the door, sans her red umbrella. She offers him a warm smile. Her hair is down today, dark wild curls in all directions, and she’s holding another bag with the Treatment Center’s logo on it.

“Hey, come on in.” He stands back to let her inside, taking her coat from her. “Dad’s making dinner, if you’re interested?”

“Oh no, that’s very kind of you, but my wife is making dinner for me tonight.” She holds up the bag, letting it swing a little at the end of her finger. “But I did bring you something.”

Niall watches her unload the bag on an end table. It’s the same stuff as before, needles and vials full of a clear liquid.

“Remember last time I was here, I told you they were trying to make a longer lasting Neurotriptyline?” Niall nods. “Well, here it is.” She gestures to the collection of supplies spread out on the table. “You’re one of the first to get this new batch.” She nudges him gently in the side.

“It’s safe, though right?” He asks, picking up a vial. He shakes the liquid inside, watching it turn a cloudy as the medicine is activated.

“Oh yes, yes. Tested quite extensively. This should last you up to a week on one dosage.” She digs around in her bag, retrieving a small notepad with a list of questions typed in blue ink on the front. “Just a few questions and I’ll be on my way.”

Bobby has left his cooking for now, leaning against the doorframe separating the kitchen. He nods his greeting to Rosie.

“Do you have a friend/family/or partner to distribute the required dosage to you?” They go through this list of questions fairly quickly, Bobby jumping in to answer a couple of times. Rosie checks off the boxes next to each question. It’s basic stuff, info about his medical history and the medication or side effects, is his safety compromised by anything, is he attending the required community hours per week.

“Alright,” She says, clicking her pen closed. “Everything looks in order here. You have my number if you need anything.”

“Sure, thanks.” Bobby says, shaking her hand. He’s gotten less squeamish around the needles, and he gathers the supplies together to store with the rest of Niall’s stuff, leaving Rosie and Niall alone.

Rosie grabs his wrist, tugging him close. She lowers her voice, “that friend you asked me to look into last time. Trevor MacDonald?”

Niall freezes. He’d forgotten about Trevor. Maybe he’s here to tell her he’s finally been released. Maybe she knows where he can find him.

Rosie frowns, the wrinkles at the side of her mouth deepening. “I’m sorry, dear.” She reaches one hand out to him. “He didn’t make it. The body rejected the medication.”

“I – I didn’t even know that was something that could happen.” He swallows thickly.

Rosie reaches into her bag, pulling out one more item. “He didn’t have any living relatives, I’m afraid. You were the only contact of his outside.” She hands him one of the Treatment Center bags, smaller than the ones given to the patients departing. “These were all that was left.”

Niall numbly takes the bag. Rosie doesn’t say anything else, turning to leave with one last sympathetic look at Niall.

-

He doesn’t look at the contents in the bag. Inside the crooked desk drawer in his room is a worn copy of a Stephen King novel his brother gave him when he left for uni and the note with Harry’s PDS meeting time on it. The bag joins these items. The drawer doesn’t fully shut any more, always a sliver of space left open, taunting him.

Sleep doesn’t come easily, ever, but particularly tonight. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Trevor’s pale, dead face. It blends with Harry’s bare face, no less pale or blank.

There’s a space of time that he loses. When he blinks back to reality, he’s in an unfamiliar part of town. Thick white fog hangs in the air, obscuring his surroundings. He curls his hands under his armpits, hunching into himself.

He walks for a while, wondering through the empty, dark streets. Somehow, he finds his way to Louis’ house. He’s only been here once before, during an inventory run Louis had to drop off an unregistered weapon, but Niall recognizes it easily enough.

He rings the doorbell before he can talk himself out of it. He can’t be out for much longer. Not this late at night.

A porch light flickers to life, flooding Niall in white light. 

“Niall?” Louis answers, voice sleep rough. He’s barefoot, in loose sweats and a vest. He immediately shivers with the door open, skin pimpling up in the cold air.

“Can I come in?”

Louis coughs but moves out of the way to let Niall slip in.

“How long have you been out there?”

Niall shrugs. Louis’ house is a mess, coats hanging off chairs and couches, shoes kicked in any corner, empty beer bottles and food containers spread out on any available surface. There’s a lived-in charm about the room, but the mess also makes the tingling in Niall’s fingers kick up a notch.

Louis’ looking at him wearily, eyes guarded but a concerned tilt to his mouth.

“Niall,” He says slowly. He reaches out touch Niall’s hand. He’s so distracted he barely notices the touch. “You’re shaking.”

He nods like an idiot instead of answering of any of Louis’ questions. A door opens upstairs, the floors creaking as someone moves around. Louis stares hard at the stairs for a moment.

He’s still holding Niall’s hand, and when he turns his attention back to him, he very gently tugs on it, leading Niall towards the stairs.

“Let’s go to my room.”

Niall lets himself be led, happy to follow. Louis doesn’t ask him any more questions, gently undresses him from his wet clothes and helps him into a dry shirt. He tucks him into his bed, kicking off the dirty clothes at the foot of the bed onto the floor, before slipping under the covers with Niall.

There’s one lamp on the room, casting everything in a hazy golden glow. The semi-darkness is comforting. They lay there in silence, turned towards each other in Louis’ double bed, watching each other.

-

Louis draws a jagged line on Niall’s face, starting at his hairline and dragging the tip of his index finger down the slope of Niall’s nose, under his eye, over the seam of his lips. “Can you feel that?” He whispers. He adds another finger, tracking the same path a second time.

Niall lets his eyes close so Louis can brush his thumb over the lids. He hums a bit, shifting closer under the sanctuary of the blankets. His ankle bumps into Louis’. He leaves it there.

“Not really.” Louis makes a displeased noise in the back of throat, drawing his hand away from Niall’s face. Niall grins a little, letting his fingers tangle in Louis’ free hand. “I can feel the pressure of your hand.” He reopens his eyes. Louis has pillow creases on his cheek and his hair is knotted at the top of his head. They’ve haven’t slept, instead sharing hushed conversation in the dark and watching the progression of the morning wash the room in grey light.

Niall mimics Louis’ journey on his face. Louis wrinkles his nose, twitching away from the touch. “Tickles.” He mumbles into the pillow.

“Yeah.” Louis hooks his feet around Niall’s ankle, pulling him closer. “I can’t really feel temperature. Or texture. But I know when you’re touching me.” Louis is watching him, silent and still. Niall always wants to be touching him. “And it doesn’t all feel the same. I can still tell the difference.”

Louis tilts his chin up. “Like what?”

“Like when you’re being a twat, trying to get a raise outta me. When you’re being nice to me.”

“I’m always nice.”

“Your kisses feel different.” He says. Louis shoves his face away that.

“You are a terrible sap.” He grumbles, burying himself inside the blanket cocoon they’ve created. Niall laughs, rubbing his face against the pillow, trying to focus on the way it feels. He has memories of softness, of cotton and feathers, how the cold side of the pillow always felt better. The memories are enough.

Eventually, Louis emerges from his hiding place, peeking out so just the top of his head is visible, his nose and mouth still covered. Niall blinks, yawning and wiggling his toes against Louis’ calf.

“So you do get tired then.” The words are a little muffled under the blankets.

“Mhm.” He’s quite sleepy right now.

Louis is rearranging himself so his elbow is propped up, head resting on his hand. He’s hovering over Niall now, looking down at him.

“How does that all like. Work.”

“Sleep?”

Louis huffs, face pinched in a frustration. “No. Your,” He waves a hand down the length of Niall’s body. “Whole thing.” The tips of his ears are pink.

“Well,” Niall starts, listing off on his fingers. “You already know that I don’t eat, so that rules out all the bodily functions that go along with that.” Louis rolls his eyes. “I don’t sweat, or cry. Hot and cold aren’t really issues.” He pauses, chewing on his lip for a moment. 

“What about – ” Louis draws his knee up until he’s nudging Niall in the balls.

“Sex isn’t really – an option anymore, for me.”

“Oh.” Louis quickly pulls back. 

Niall frowns. They still haven’t defined whatever – this is between them. They’ve kissed a few times now. That first time outside the abandoned factory, and another time when Louis was dropping Niall off at home after community hours. It’s never lead anywhere, and neither of them have made any move to put words to what that means. They spend more time together than they do apart, lately, to the point where he now sees Louis more than he does Liam. Mostly Niall knows that he likes Louis, likes being around him, likes the lack of expectations Louis has. Niall is free to be whoever he is now, not who he was before. It’s easy, and fun, and if Niall spends most of his time away from Louis thinking about the next time he gets to see him, well, nobody else has to know.

“I don’t heal anymore either.” He adds, steering the conversation into safer territory. He glances down to his knee, at the rough stitching that’s holding his flesh together over the bone. He’s not sure what happened to it, whether it was during the crash or later, after he’d risen, but it must have been pretty brutal judging by the scar.

“Can I see?” Louis is sitting fully up in the bed now. Niall nods, slowly, drawing his knee up to his chest. He slides the leg of his joggers up so it’s bunched around his thigh, revealing the dark, ugly wound.

Louis doesn’t ask to touch him this time. He takes Niall’s skinny leg in his hands, rubbing his thumb over the course stitching. Niall winces, tries to pull away, but Louis’ holding on tight enough he doesn’t get far.

“What happened?” Louis is still holding on to his leg, watching his fingers move over his knee. Niall watches him.

“Dunno.” He flexes his leg to feel the weight of Louis’ grip.

“So it doesn’t hurt?”

Niall shakes his head. “No.”

Louis looks away from his knee, meeting his gaze. “Good.” He says. He crawls back up the bed, curling around Niall’s body. Niall wraps an arm around Louis’ shoulder, holding him close. He’s never had this with anyone before - just being with someone, calm in the early morning.

Louis’ stomach growl then, demanding attention. He grins at Niall, shameless.

“Want me to make you breakfast?”

Louis’ eyebrows shoot up. “You know how to cook?” Niall nods. “I may keep you yet, Horan.”

Predictably, Louis’ kitchen is just as messy as the rest of his house.

“You live in absolute filth, Tomlinson.” Niall wrinkles his nose as he brushes a section of clutter off the counter into a trash bag. Louis is unrepentant, munching on dry cereal out of the box while he watches Niall attempt to tidy.

“I want a full English breakfast.” Louis demands the moment the counter is cleaned. Niall’s in the middle of wiping down the surface with some disinfecting wipes he found under the sink when Louis jumps onto the counter.

“You’ll get whatever I decide to make you,” Niall mutters. Louis grabs the back of his shirt when he turns and pulls Niall into the spread of his legs. He doesn’t say anything, instead just looking at Niall, eyes searching his face for some truth. Niall doesn’t squirm away, takes the opportunity to stare back at Louis.

Whatever Louis sees seems to satisfy him. He kicks Niall’s butt with the heel of his foot. “I demand bacon.” He shouts.

Before Niall can properly start the meal, a door upstairs slams and the noise of feet stomping down the stairs follows.

Louis freezes.

Zayn walks in, shirtless, idly scratching at his belly. He yawns, stretches his arms over his head. Niall half-smiles at him, but Louis is watching him the way he sometimes watches the leaders of Give Back, or the way he looks during perimeter checks – he’s on high alert, preparing for an attack.

“You’re up early.” Louis’ voice is off. As guarded as he can be, he’s terrible at hiding any of his emotions.

Zayn grunts. “Gotta be. Have to supervise today bunch o’ rotters today.”

Oh.

Niall closes his eyes, slowly lowering the package of bacon he was holding.

“Louis.” Zayn’s voice loses that easy early morning rasp. “The fuck.” Niall keeps his eyes closed, but he can feel Louis slipping off the counter.

“Zayn, don’t do this right now.”

“You’re just going to start inviting them in our house now? Not bad enough we’ve gotta see them every day at our fucking jobs.”

“Stop.”

“Should we just leave the door open? Let any of ‘em wonder in? We can put up a sign.”

“Zayn, enough.” Louis finally raises his voice loud enough to be heard over Zayn’s shouting.

“Get out.” Niall’s still not looking, squeezing his eyes closed as tightly as possible. Zayn makes a move forward, but Louis blocks him, holding him back with a hand on his chest.

“Are you serious right now? Do you know what he is?”

“Zayn, shut up.”

“Fuck you, Louis.”

Zayn stalks out of the kitchen. A few moments later a door slams. Niall finally opens his eyes. Louis is standing in the center of the room, staring at the door.

Niall clears his throat.

“I’ll just. Go.”

“Don’t be stupid.” Louis says, finally moving. “We’ve got work soon. I’ll drive you.” His voice is flat, and he won’t look at Niall.

Niall knows when he’s not wanted, but the only other option is saying in the kitchen and that’s not going to happen. He follows Louis back up to his room. The second the door closes behind them, Louis deflates into the bed.

“This isn’t your fault.” He’s talking into his hands, but his words are clear enough. “Zayn lost a lot during the Rising.”

Niall doesn’t point out that everyone has. He stays silent, standing in the middle of the room.

“It’s hard for him.” Louis drags a hand down his face, rubs at the scruff on his chin. He gets up, drifting around the room, gathering clothes.

Niall watches him move around him getting ready for the day. He offers Niall a clean shirt, which Niall takes but doesn’t move to put it on. “What about you?”

“What?” Louis’ back is turned to him. He’s putting on deodorant.

“Why is this so easy for you.”

Louis glances over his shoulder, his face pinched. “None of this is easy, Niall.”

“Then what’s the point of this?” He gestures between them. “Why help that day in the grocery store?”

Louis looks wounded. “Because you needed help. Fuck, Niall, what is this? I don’t need you questioning everything I do as well.” He snaps.

Niall wants to be angry. He wants to fight, wants to yell and curse and break something. Louis is right. None of this is easy, and he’s so tired of every day being another battle he has to survive. He’s barely making it through each day.

“You’re right.” He’s wringing the shirt between his hands. “I’m sorry.” Louis nods, but it’s hesitant. He won’t look at Niall.

Niall reaches out to him first. They fall into each other clinging desperately for something to ground them. Louis grips Niall’s hips tight, pulling him closer until their bodies matches up. Niall holds his cheek, kissing him until there’s nothing else, just this, Louis’ lips on his.

-

Niall is on fence work today. Louis tells him this as they pull up in front of the construction area. He frowns when he says it, “there’s only so many days I can get away with borrowing you.” A crowd is already forming there when they pull up. Niall squeezes Louis’ hand over the console where he’s kept a tight grip throughout the ride over. 

He’s reluctant to let go and climb out of the truck.

“I’ll be around, okay?” Louis says quietly. He’s not paying any attention to the group outside. Louis isn’t strictly a supervisor on fence duty – a bloke named Matt with perpetually greasy hair is the main supervisor, along with a girl whose name Niall doesn’t know.

“I’ll be okay without you.” Niall half-smiles at him. It’s weird to fake it around Louis. He hasn’t ever had to before. Louis doesn’t look convinced, but he releases Niall’s hand after one last squeeze so he can get out.

Matt is sitting in a lawn chair, feet resting on a cooler. He doesn’t acknowledge Niall when he walks up.

There’s a pile of the ugly orange vests on the ground next to him. Niall grabs one, pulling it over the shirt he’s borrowed from Louis. It’s too big and smells vaguely of mold and cheese.

He gets into line with the others, ignoring the questioning stares.

Fence duty is meant to repair the broken parts of the perimeter fence. It’s mostly useless, since the fence remains unfinished, with large portions of it missing. Niall suspects Bobby’s rants may not be too far off about this part at least. This is only meant to keep them busy, somewhere they’re easily watched.

April is nearing the end, and while the earth is starting to look alive again, the last dregs of winter still cling to the air. It makes the work more difficult, the ground slippery and waterlogged in the places it isn’t still frozen. A hint of the thick fog from the night before makes the air damp and heavy.

“Alright get to work, don’t know what ya waiting for.” Matt grouses. He pops the top of a beer bottle, flicking to cap towards them.

“I –” Niall starts, looking around as the rest of the group twitches into motion. Someone knocks into Niall’s shoulder, jostling him forward. “What am I - ?” He doesn’t finish before a hand clamps around his upper arm.

Harry drags him away from the group to a spot in the fence no one has claimed yet. “Just do what I do.” He mutters, picking up a shovel that was left leaning against the chain link. He hands it to Niall, who holds the tool awkwardly while he watches Harry get to work. He copies his movements, slower and less precise.

They don’t talk. Niall is concentrating too hard to say much of anything, and Harry seems content to ignore him.

It’s an hour later when Harry puts down his shovel and shakes his hair out of his face. He leans his weight on the shovel, tipping forward slightly. Niall stops as well, dropping the shovel to the ground.

“Keep going.” Harry says. “We’re not supposed to stop until the shift is over.” Niall closes his eyes, biting back his retort. Harry is helping him. He picks the shovel back up.

“Didn’t realize you were all buddy-buddy with them.”

Niall huffs, wiping hair off his forehead with the back of his hand. At least he doesn’t sweat anymore. “Shockingly, I do have friends.”

Harry laughs. “Yeah, obviously.”

“What do you want Harry?”

“Nothing.” Harry picks at his nails, digging dirt out from underneath them. “Just seems convenient, is all.”

“What are you on about?”

“Think for a second, Niall. Tomlinson’s their trophy boy. Most kills – that means us.” He gestures between them. “And now he’s got a new rotter buddy? Don’t be naïve. It can get you killed.”

“Not everything is such a conspiracy like you seem to think it is.” Niall hits a patch of frozen ground with his shovel, the metal bouncing off the earth with a clang. He beats at the ground, small pieces of icy dirt chipping away.

“Niall,” Harry grabs his arm again, forcing him to stop his attack on the ground and look at him. At his full height, Harry is decently taller than Niall. It’s more obvious now than ever. Harry doesn’t glare, but the anger shifts his face into something more menacing. It’s so different from that day in his garden with Louis, where Louis’ threat was so clear. Niall can’t read Harry’s intention.

He shakes the hand off his arm, stepping back. He still has his shovel in hand.

“I’m trying to help you.” Harry explains.

“Styles. Get back to work.” Matt yells. He’s standing now, a gun in his hand hanging loosely by his side. Harry eyes the gun wearily, turning to pick up his shovel without a word.

Niall spends the rest of his afternoon staring at Harry’s silent back.

-

He doesn’t see much of Louis in the coming weeks. Something has changed – not just in their relationship, but Louis has become secretive, deflecting any direct questions. He’s no longer working with Louis, instead bouncing between jobs.

The days he’s on fence duty, Harry won’t even glance in his direction. No one else is willing to talk to him either, not after seeing him with Louis. He doesn’t even have Liam anymore, not since he found a full time job working at a pub in town. Liam tries to get Niall to visit him during his shifts, but Niall knows what people are willing to do sober, and he’s not ready to see what they’ll do after a few pints.

He feels like he’s back at the beginning, alone and unwelcome. Everyone else is continuing on with his life, and he’s stuck. There is nothing for him to look forward to, no future planned out, no journey ahead of him. This is what his life will be, day in and day out. This is all there is.

Louis shows up randomly one night. He doesn’t stay for more than a cursory greeting with Bobby before he’s tugging Niall out the door. Niall’s too pleased to see him for more than five minutes; he doesn’t question where they’re going.

Louis doesn’t drive for long, just far enough that they’re away from the neighborhoods before he parks and kills the engine.

“Hey.” He’s grinning, reaching over to pull Niall into a kiss before Niall can get his greeting out. He laughs into the kiss, tugging Louis’ shirt to get him closer. It takes a moment for them to fit right against each other, but then they slot together and Niall immediately relaxes into it.

“Missed you,” Louis whispers. He nudges his nose against Niall’s, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek. “Hated not seeing you.” He hides his face in Niall’s neck, breathing deep against him. Niall rests his chin atop Louis’ head, fingers spread wide on his back, feeling him breathe through the thin cotton shirt. He pretends he can feel the warmth bleeding from Louis’ body into his fingers. Imagines he could soak up the heat leaving Louis, like a plant feeding off the sun.

“You smell much better than I thought a dead person would,” Louis speaks right into his neck, lips dancing along the skin. He can’t feel his breath, or the soft kisses that Louis trails down to his collar, but he pretends he can.

Niall laughs, shoulders shaking, disturbing Louis. He goes to pinch Niall’s nipple, and Niall lets him, can’t believe there would ever be a time he would stop Louis from paying any sort of attention to him, even if it hurt him.

“Come on.” Louis says, pushing at Niall’s shoulders until he climbs into the bed of the truck. Louis grins again, that sharp, pleased grin that Niall knows means trouble. Niall lies down at Louis’ urging, wrapping his arms around Louis when he lies over of him.

It’s already dark out. Niall has to strain to see Louis’ face hovering over him. Louis lowers himself down to touch his mouth to Niall’s, kissing him softly, sweetly.

Louis is never as still, but especially when they’re kissing. He’s squirming closer, shoving hands under clothes or into Niall’s hair, tugging and pulling at anything he can wrap his fingers around. Niall follows suit, trailing fingertips lightly over Louis’ side under his skin. Louis jerks, ticklish, and bites on Niall’s lip in punishment. Niall smiles, does it again, keeping his touch lighter than a whisper.

They keep it up for a while, touching each other in the dark, close space in the back of Louis’ truck.

“God, Niall.” Louis moans, pushing up until he’s sitting, straddling Niall’s hips.

“No, come back.” Niall pouts, reaching up to tug Louis back to him. Louis bats his hands away.

“If I kiss you any longer, things are gonna get embarrassing for me real fast.”

Niall bites his lip, smirking. He rolls his hips up slowly just to see the way Louis tightens his thighs over his hips. His hands frame Louis’ hips, keeping him in place, repeating the motion. Louis’ eyes flutter shut.

“Fuck. Stop.” He says, but he’s laughing. “It’s past your curfew. Shouldn’t we be getting you home?”

Niall frowns. “You know how to ruin a mood, Tommo.”

Louis pecks him quickly on the mouth, climbing back into the drivers seat.

-

It becomes a game, sneaking around, stealing kisses in the back of Louis’ truck like a couple of teenagers. Pushing the boundaries of how long can they avoid real life, hidden away in some side road. In public, Louis will wait until no one’s looking to press Niall into a wall and kiss him quick and hard before anyone notices.

It leaves Niall dizzy from happiness. The one good thing he can look forward, the anticipation waiting for the next time he gets to see Louis again.

“Do you think he got in trouble?” Liam asks him one day. They’ve worked out a schedule for Niall to stop by the pub when Liam’s opening up. It’s not a perfect solution, and Niall still has to sneak out the back with his hoodie pulled tight up over his head, but at least he gets to see Liam.

Niall shrugs, drawing a circle in the salt on the bar top.

“Like, someone saw you two together and told him he wasn’t allowed to see you anymore?”

Niall makes a face. “Liam, this isn’t Romeo and Juliet.”

Liam throws a rag at him at that, and the conversation dissolves into tossing peanuts at each other. But the thought stays with Niall, lingering in the back of his mind whenever he’s waiting for Louis to show up.

If Bobby notices anything, he doesn’t say, but he does loosen his rules, trusting Niall to go out on his own without checking in as often.

“Good to see you back to normal, kid.” He says one day, ruffling Niall’s hair.

It’s a good distraction for him.

He’s getting dreams more often. Mostly nightmares, the same ghastly images that are burned into his memories. But also – sometimes – dreams about Louis. Exposed, sweaty skin, panting, hushed swears. He wakes with a start every time, a phantom ache between his legs.

His hands have starting trembling. It’s not noticeable at first, something he can shake out with a flick of his wrist. But it starts happening more often. When he’s at work, when he’s with applying his mousse, when he’s with Louis.

He can’t make them stop. The best he can do is curl his hands into fists and wait until the shaking ends.

 

He starts to fantasize about food again whenever his dad or Liam are eating in front of him. Taste is harder to remember than touch, and he’ll find himself reaching out of a slice of pizza or a bite of spaghetti, before he catches himself. 

At first he chalks it up to the new medication – even for the undead, there can be side effects to changing dosage. But the symptoms don’t go away.

He calls Rosie one night, frantic and pacing his room. The phone beeps to voicemail and Niall panics, hanging up, tossing the phone away before Rosie’s automatic message is finished. 

If what Niall fears is happening is actually happening, he’d rather postpone that talk. 

With no one else to turn to, he goes to Harry.

It’s awkward. 

Harry answers the door, bare-chested, his patchwork of jagged scars running across the length of his chest.

He doesn’t say anything, raising one skeptical eyebrow at Niall before turning his back to him and walking back into the kitchen. He leaves the door open, though, so Niall tentatively steps into the house.

“Um.”

“In here.” Harry calls from the kitchen, as if Niall couldn’t see him from where he’s left standing by the door. He follows Harry’s voice, shoving his curled fists into the pockets of his jeans.

Harry is standing over a pot boiling on the stove. There are an arrangement of veggies and pasta spread out on the counter next to him. He’s chopping an onion meticulously.

Niall watches him until the onion is diced until perfectly sized cube pieces. He starts when Harry turns abruptly to look at him.

“What do you want.” He doesn’t ask it as a question.

Niall clears his throat. He picks up a penguin shaped salt shaker. When it’s next to the pepper shaker, the two animals look like they’re hugging.

“Why are you cooking? Expecting company.”

“It calms me down.”

“Yeah, me too.” Niall puts the shaker back on the table, matching it up with its mate. “I cook for my dad most nights. He’s pitiful in the kitchen. Can’t even boil water correctly.” Niall chuckles awkwardly.

Harry remains silent. He’s chopping carrots now.

“Do you just throw the food away when you’re done?”

“No.”

Niall bites the inside of his cheek. “Well, whatever you’re cooking smells delicious. Making me hungry.”

Harry sets down the knife at that, removing the pot of boiling water and turning to face Niall fully.

“Sit.” He commands. Niall sits.

Harry stays leaning against the counter, crossing his arms over his broad chest. Niall takes a moment to really look at the scars in proper lightly. Whatever caused them cut deep, but with amateur movement. He wonders if Harry was alive when it happened. He really hopes not.

Harry doesn’t seem to mind the staring. With all the low cut shirts he wears, the scars are more badges of honor to him than anything to be ashamed of. Niall thinks of his own knee, how grotesque it looks. Just another part of himself that he needs to hide.

“You said you were hungry?”

Fuck.

Niall quickly drops his eyes. There’s no way to back out now. This was what he came here for, after all.

“Do you know what that means?”

Niall shakes his head.

Harry pulls out one of the chairs, spinning it around to sit in it backwards. “I heard a story about an older woman up North. Lived all by herself in this little cottage far removed from the rest of the town. Sweet old thing, never bothered anyone all the time she was alive.” Harry raises his brows pointedly. “Well, all she wanted to do when she came back was return to her little cottage and work on her garden. That’s what made her happy.” Harry pinches his bottom lip between his forefinger and thumb, letting the pause hang there, like he was trying to decide how to continue his story. “Couple weeks go by, some people from the town decide to check on her. When they get there, everything’s fine. She’s as happy as can be.”

“Okay.” Niall says slowly, narrowing his eyes. “What was the point of this little tale?”

“The only difference was, this little old lady wasn’t dead anymore. She’d been cured.”

Niall scoffed angrily. He should’ve known better than to come to Harry looking for real answers. “I don’t have time for this.”

Harry shrugs. “Didn’t believe it when I first heard it either. Then I started hearing other stories all saying the same thing – for whatever reason, some people were being cured.”

Niall leveled his gaze at Harry. “You think I’ve miraculously been cured of being dead.” He shakes his head. “I thought you loved being dead. You always try to convince me how great it is. Now you’re trying to tell me I’m alive again? Fuck this.”

He moves to stand up. Harry doesn’t try to stop him. He doesn’t even look at Niall, staring at the table.

“I give my food to Walter.” Harry says quietly. Niall freezes. “He lives across the street. Lost both his kids during the Uprising. Kept hoping his wife would come back to him but - ” He trails off with a shrug. “I like to leave him food sometimes. He’s not always good at eating what he should.”

Niall sits back down in his seat with a heavy sigh.

“You were using too much garlic in your dish. You only need about half that amount.” Niall says.

“Fuck off, I do not use too much.” Harry laughs. It’s the first time Niall’s seen a genuine reaction from him, where’s not trying to manipulate or charm the other person. Niall laughs too, a little. “If you’re so good, show me how you’d do it.”

It’s fun, the two of them throwing ingredients into a pot together. Harry is a very traditional chef, despite everything else about his eclectic life. The dish they end up with smells good. Niall breathes in the deep scent of the pasta, tempted to take a bite, if only to see what would happen, but he backs off.

Harry wraps the dish up in foil, sticking a little note with a hastily drawn smile on it.

“Why did you come here, Niall?” He asks as he starts cleaning off the counter.

“Because you told me you wanted to help.”

Harry sighs. “Alright. What can I do?”

“If I’m - ” Niall cuts himself off, has to swallow thickly around the words. “If my medicine isn’t working, and I’m –.” He glances up at Harry, pleading. “What do I do?”

“Have you told anyone else?” Niall shakes his head. He always hated crying as a kid. Greg would tease him mercilessly for it, calling him a baby. Now though, he thinks he could do with a good cry.

“Jesus, Niall.” Harry runs his finger through his hair, fluffing the curls into a frizzy mess.

“My friend Trevor died.” Niall whispers. “They told me his body rejected the treatment.” He holds Harry’s gaze – those dead eyes. Dead isn’t the right word for his eyes, though. There’s life to them, emotion in his gaze. Pain, pity, hurt. “What if that’s what’s happening to me?”

“Then we’ll find you a new treatment.” Harry reaches over to take his hand. It’s strange, Niall thinks, that even in death, touch is still comforting. “You came back from the dead, Niall. Nothing’s impossible.” 

-

Niall doesn’t have much time to process his conversation with Harry. When he gets home, Louis’ black truck is idling on the street. Zayn is slumped in the passenger seat, a hood pulled up over his head. He glares at Niall when he walks past. The driver’s seat is empty.

Louis is in his kitchen with his dad. There’s a steaming mug of tea on the table, Louis’ hands wrapped around it. He looks up when Niall walks in and smiles.

“Hey.” Niall says, shooting a questioning look at his dad. “What’s going on?”

Bobby’s frowning. “Louis’ got a job for you.” He grumbles.

“Yeah.” Louis says, standing. “Got the okay from the team to take you with us tonight.”

“Okay.” Niall glances between Louis and Bobby. “What are we doing?”

“Some reports of rabids down on Acker Street.”

“Right. I’ll just – go get ready, then.”

The drive is eerily quiet. Zayn doesn’t acknowledge Niall as he slides into the backseat, instead slumping deeper into his seat, shoulders hunching protectively.

Louis is silent, focused on driving. He keeps fidgeting, adjusting the seatbelt around his chest, tapping his fingers against the wheel.

They pull of Acker Street to a thick section of woods. Zayn’s got his gun out, holding it stiffly in front of him. Louis’ pulls something out of the back of his truck – a long, thin pole with a net at the end. When he walks by Niall, he reaches up to squeeze the back of his neck, letting his hand linger for moment. Niall leans into his touch instinctually.

Zayn is watching them, a deep scowl on his face. He still doesn’t say anything, stomping ahead into the thickest part of the woods.

“Got a call about an hour ago.” Louis whispers to him, keeping his voice low as they follow after Zayn. “Report of something large in the woods in here. Caller thought it was a rabid, but so does everyone. Usually it’s a raccoon.” He laughs, but it’s strained.

“Lou.” Zayn hisses. Louis and Niall stop, trying to figure out which direction Zayn has wandered off in. Zayn calls for Louis again, just meters to the left of where they are standing. Louis goes first, stepping carefully over the fallen branches.

It’s so dark that Niall can barely follow Louis with his eyes. He listens instead, following his footsteps. They aren’t even far off from the road, but the leaves have grown thick and full, leaving a dense canopy overhead, blocking out any light from the moon.

“Heard something over there.” Zayn whispers. He’s hardly a dark outline in the blackness. Niall rubs his eyes, trying to adjust.

That’s when they hear it – the soft shuffle of feet through the debris of the woods. It doesn’t sound very close, but it’s too difficult to tell.

The dark is suffocating, closing in on them. It’s like being trapped in that coffin. Niall can’t breathe.

“Lou - ” His voice is weak. He reaches out, dizzy.

“It’s too dark to see anything,” Louis says. His voice sounds far away. Niall blinks, trying to locate him.

“Louis.” He calls out again, terrified. He stumbles forward, tripping over a log, ending up on the ground. He gasps, pushing against the wet earth.

A hand grabs him the back of his shirt, hauling him up.

“Quiet.” Zayn hisses in his ear. He keeps a tight grip on his shirt, keeping Niall close. “Fuck, you’re so loud. Do you want every rotter to know exactly where we are?”

He shoves Niall forward.

That’s when they hear Louis shout.

Zayn doesn’t wait for him, taking off at a sprint in the direction of the noise. Niall tries to follow, but he’s slow and disorientated.

He gets there in time to watch Louis trip backward, going down with a hard crack. The rabid stumbles after him on his knees, but Louis isn’t getting up. He’s not moving at all.

“Hey.” Niall shouts, jumping forward, waving his arms.

The rabid turns to look at him, pale eyes glowing in the dim light. Whoever is inside this monster – he’s just a kid. Younger than Niall - 15 maybe. “Hey.” Niall say again, softer. He reaches a hand out, hoping to coax it away from Louis. Niall’s eyes dart back to Louis to see if he’s gotten up, but he hasn’t moved at all.

Whatever Niall’s doing is working. The kid has forgotten his prey, standing on stiff legs to totter towards Niall. There’s no sign of the net. It must be somewhere near Louis, but Niall isn’t willing to risk drawing the attention back to Louis.

Before he can figure out what do, a gunshot goes off.

Niall stumbles backward, falling down. The kid falls dead – full stop dead – to the ground. Part of his head is missing.

Zayn’s standing there, gun still raised. If he pulls the trigger again, Niall would be dead.

“Louis.” Niall gasps, looking over to him. He stands, trembling, to fall on his knees by Louis’ head. There’s a large gash in his temple, his hair soaked in red liquid. Zayn is still standing where he was, staring at the body of the boy.

“Zayn.” Niall shouts. He presses his hands to the wound to stop the bleeding. Zayn curses, rubbing a hand over his face, before falling to his knees next to Niall.

Everything else is a blur after that. They somehow get Louis into his truck and to the hospital, where the single doctor on staff takes over.

Nothing feels real.

Niall keeps touching Louis, gripping his hand, or his knee. Pushing the hair back from his face.

The wound looks both worse and better in the florescent lights of the hospital room. The doctor cleans it quickly, ensuring both Niall and Zayn that it looks much worse than it actually is.

“He’ll probably just sleep.” The doctor offers once he’s covered the wound. He’s got a thick Indian accent, and thicker moustache on his upper lip. Niall still has blood on his hands and face. “And he’ll have a massive headache when he wakes. But he should be fine.”

Zayn hasn’t said a single thing since they got Louis into the car. Niall doesn’t even turn to look at him when he leaves.

He keeps seeing the kid’s face right before he died. The shock on his face before he hit the ground. His white, empty eyes still open.

His body is still out there. His family will never know what happened to him.

That could have so easily been Niall out there. There’s not only the possibility of him rejecting his medicine, but if he misses even one dosage, that’s what he would become.

He remembers his first night after he’d risen so vividly. It’s burned into his memory now. He relives it every time he closes his eyes. 

He remembers the hunger. The wild, bone deep hunger. He remembers walking, searching for something to satisfy him. Remembers picking that house. It was easy enough to break in – some left over instinct from before he died.

He remembers the man’s screams, telling his wife to run. How the man tried to fight, beat him off with anything he could reach. He had overpowered the man quickly – the hunger was that powerful. Nothing could have stopped him then.

He remembers killing him. Every bloodied, horrible second, watching the life drain out the man. His victim was still alive when he took the first bite.

Niall could return to that so easily. One missed dosage and that would be it. He’s putting everyone he loves at risk. His dad, Liam. Louis.

Louis once said he wasn’t afraid to shoot. Niall wonders if Louis would do that to him, if he turned again. If Louis would put a gun to his head and pull the trigger.

He’s sleeping fitfully in the hospital bed. His head is wrapped up in stark white plasters, his face tense with pain.

Niall reaches out to touch the side of Louis’ face where his hairline thins out. He shaved recently, only a thin bit of stubble on his checks. Niall rubs his thumb there, soothing out the lines on Louis’ face.

-

Louis has been out of the hospital for three days when Niall rings his doorbell. He doesn’t get a chance to say anything. Louis takes one look at his face and knows right away.

“You are fucking joking.”

Niall winces. “Can we talk outside, please?”

Louis slams the door behind him, following him out into the garden.

The plasters have come off Louis’ head. If you weren’t looking directly at the wound, it would be hard to tell he was injured.

“I really shouldn’t be surprised.” Louis is leaning against the railing to the garden, back tense. His fingers are gripped tight around the iron wrought, skin white against the black paint. It’s raining lightly, his hair dusted with water.

Niall tucks his hands under his armpits. Louis isn’t looking at him, staring out in the silent street. Niall doesn’t have to turn and look to know that Zayn is standing by the little window in the kitchen, watching them.

“Why’s that?” He asks with a little shrug.

Louis shivers, tucking into his chin thin jumper.

“I guess I don’t really know you, do I?”

Niall closes his eyes. “Bullshit, Louis.” Louis blinks. He’s standing so still. It’s jarring, seeing him like this. “You know me.”

Niall’s fingers keep twitching. He’s balls his hands into a fist, uncurls his fingers, and repeats the motion three more times. He wants to reach out, to offer some comfort. The scar on the side of Louis’ temple is starting to heal, scabbed over now.

Niall takes a step back.

“Will I still get to see you?” Louis’ voice is low, quiet. His grip on the fence hasn’t loosened.

“It’s probably not a good idea.” He expects a reaction from Louis, an outburst, some sort of argument to keep him from leaving. Louis stays blank. Niall takes another step back to keep from reaching out for him.

He should leave. Staying longer will only make this harder than it already is.

“I survived on my own before you came along, you know. One little rabid isn’t going to scare me off.” Louis says fiercely.

“You got hurt.”

“I’ve been hurt before.” He shouts. Finally, he releases the fence to face Niall. He’s always known how quickly Louis’ moods can change, going from hot to cold in seconds. He’s never been on the receiving end of such a chilling look before, as if Louis doesn’t even know him. “I nearly had my leg torn off by one of those things.” He cuts off abruptly when his voice breaks.

“I am one of those things.” Niall yells. It feels good to shout back, to release some of the energy boiling in him. “It could have just as easily been me trying to rip your leg off or – ” He stops himself. Then, quieter, “you don’t seem to get that.”

Louis’ jaw clenches. He looks away.

Niall’s hand is shaking again.

“Being with me isn’t worth it.”

“Fuck off, Niall.” Louis spits. He won’t look at him.

“Bye, Louis.”

Niall waves once to Zayn at the window before he leaves, letting the rusty gate creak shut behind him, leaving Louis standing in the rain in his garden.

-

“Liam, quit staring at me.” Niall says. He’s been staring at him for twenty minutes now without saying a thing. Niall’s mostly been successful at ignoring him, but it’s starting to creep him out now.

“You’re an idiot, Niall.” Liam says, shaking his head. Niall rolls his eyes.

“Thanks, Liam.”

Liam’s frowning, the little crease forming between his brows he gets when he’s getting serious. Niall kicks at the end table in front of him, pushing it forward a couple centimeters so that it’s at a diagonal angle with the couch.

“Have you spoken to him?”

Niall sighs. “No, Liam, that would defeat the purpose of breaking up with him.”

“I still don’t understand –”

Niall jumps up, rubbing a hand through his hair. “I get Liam, you’re mad I broke up with Louis. But it’s done. Drop it please.”

Liam drops his serious expression, eyes going earnestly concerned. It’s hard not to feel comforted by those big brown eyes. Niall feels some of the tension leak out of him. It’s been a week since he last saw Louis.

“I’m not mad, Niall. I just.” Liam pauses, purses his lips. “He was good for you. You seemed happy.”

Niall sinks back into his seat on the couch, leaning into Liam’s touch when he reaches for him. Liam starts to rub his back, offering his shoulder for Niall’s head. “He deserves better, Liam.” Liam sighs heavily, but doesn’t say anything, keeping the gentle rubbing on Niall’s back.

It’s not ideal, but Niall lets himself enjoy a few moments of comfort.

-

“I used to work as a baker, you know.” Harry tells him one day. They’re making pie.

Niall has been spending more time around at Harry’s lately. There’s a relaxing, familiar routine when they cook together.

Harry had promised to do more research about Niall’s conditions, asking around the PDS community. Mostly he comes back with more fairy tales about people being cured. That’s not why Niall comes here.

“You don’t say.” Niall kneads at the dough, rolling it out into a flat circle.

“It’s weird, sorta. How there’s almost two versions of me. There’s the one that existed before, and the one that exists now.”

Niall hums.

“I still haven’t figured out how to balance both of them.”

He tries to get Niall to go bare pretty much every day. Niall compromises, forgoing the mousse some days. He never tells Harry that it’s because his hand shakes too much sometimes for him to put it on.

He’s trying though. He’s getting more used to see his face now.

He thinks about calling his mum a lot. He hasn’t heard from her since he left the Treatment Center. Greg messages him sometimes, but the conversations are awkward and halted, and it only leaves him craving something more.

“Think I might go visit my mum.” Niall tells Harry one sunny afternoon. Harry is shirtless – a common state for him, Niall is discovering – sunning himself on the grass. Niall’s under the shade of a tree.

“Why’s that?”

Niall shrugs, tugging up pieces of grass. A bee buzzes by his ear, landing on a flower. Niall watches it work.

Harry tips his head all the way back to look at Niall through his dark sunglasses. His skin looks white in the sunshine. Niall keeps trying to tell him he won’t tan no matter how long he sits out in the sun.

“Come with me instead.”

Niall laughs. “Harry, you’ve a very nice looking lad, but I’m not interested in you - ”

“Shut it.” Harry pouts.

Niall sighs, rolling on his back in the grass. “Fine. Where are you going, Harry?”

Harry grins. “Anywhere you want.”

Niall rolls his eyes, moving to stand up.

“No, wait, I’m serious.” Harry sits up to grab him hand. “You know there are whole communities for people like us? We can just get out of here for a while, travel around a bit. Maybe we could find someone who knows what’s going on with you. This isn’t all there is, Niall.”

He bites his lip, considering. If he left with Harry, it would keep his dad safe. He wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Louis at work anymore. 

“Well, I never did get to travel much before I died.”

epilogue 

Louis is standing in the frozen foods section, trying to decide if frozen pizza or frozen chicken wings sounds better for dinner. The glass door is frosting up from being open so long.

He sees someone enter the aisle and rolls his eyes. He steps back, letting the door slam closed, both dinner options still in his hands.

“Zayn, I told you I’d - ”

It’s not Zayn.

Niall’s got his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans. He looks good. He looks really good. “Hey, Lou.”

Louis closes his eyes, squeezing the frozen dinners.

“Haven’t seen you much this summer.” He manages to get out.

Niall shrugs. “Yeah. Haven’t been around, really.” He smiles a bit, sheepish. “Went abroad.”

“Yeah?” Louis is trying really hard to be interesting in what he’s saying. “Your dad mentioned that.” His voice is thin. He tries to smile, but it’s shaky.

Niall nods, eyes bouncing around the rows of frozen choices. Louis only realizes now that Niall is bare-faced. Other then the paler skin and his eyes, he looks exactly the same. Louis wants to bury his face in Niall’s neck and never let go.

“Glad to be back, though.” He says. He looks at Louis with that same soft smile he always had for him. “Missed it here.”

“Fuck.” Louis says. He doesn’t mean to be dramatic about it, but he can’t help it. Niall’s been gone all summer.

He squeezes his arms right around Niall’s neck. Niall laughs, his shoulders shaking as he wraps Louis up in his arms, squeezing back just as tight.

“I’m still mad at you for leaving.” Louis tells him. He’s not ready to let him go yet.

“That’s okay.” Niall says. “I’ve got time to make it up to you.”


End file.
